Category: Journal

  • Who are you when leadership costs you something?

    Who are you when leadership costs you something?

    There are plenty of ways to look like a good leader when the conditions are favourable. It is relatively easy to be patient when the day is going well, generous when there is plenty of time, courteous when the person in front of you matters to your career, and confident when everybody agrees with you. The more interesting moments are usually much smaller and less comfortable. Someone interrupts you when you are already under pressure. A colleague challenges a decision you cannot fully explain. A person with very little organisational status needs your time. Somebody says something in a meeting that you know deserves support, but supporting them would put you in direct conflict with the person above you. These moments rarely arrive with a warning that says: this is a test of your leadership. They simply happen. And, over time, the way we respond to them tells other people something about us. More importantly, it can tell us something about ourselves.

    I have always noticed small behaviours. Please and thank you matter to me. So does holding a door, checking whether somebody is coming behind you, and paying attention to how people speak to those who have less status than they do. None of these things proves that somebody is a good leader. A person can be impeccably polite and still lack courage, judgement or integrity when those qualities are genuinely required. Nor should we condemn somebody because they forgot to say thank you once or snapped on a particularly difficult day. We all have bad moments. The pattern is what interests me. When the same behaviours appear repeatedly, especially when there is nothing obvious to gain from them, they begin to reveal something. Status has a strange way of exposing this. Watch how somebody behaves towards the person who can advance their career, then watch how they behave towards the person who can do absolutely nothing for it. Consistency between those two interactions tells you far more than polished manners ever could.

    Yet I have become increasingly cautious about the easy conclusion that small behaviour simply reveals character. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it reveals what is happening to the person underneath. Annoyance can be a good example. The delayed reply, the repeated question, the interruption that arrives at exactly the wrong moment: years ago I would have reacted to some of those things far more quickly than I would now. Experience has taught me that irritation is a feeling, not an instruction. It may be telling me that somebody’s behaviour needs addressing, but it may equally be telling me that I am tired, stretched or carrying something I have not properly acknowledged. The useful question is not always, ‘What should I do about them?’ Sometimes it is, ‘What is this reaction telling me about me?’ That small pause matters because self-awareness begins before behaviour. If we only examine what we did, without becoming curious about what was driving it, we miss half the lesson.

    I learned that much more painfully earlier in my leadership career. I was promoted far more quickly than I expected. I jumped several rungs of the ladder and found myself in a senior position while still trying to understand what that level of leadership required. I felt fortunate to have been given the opportunity, and I wanted desperately to prove that the decision had been justified. My boss was a strong presence. I was called into his office repeatedly throughout the day, often with the familiar instruction to bring my notebook. Gradually, almost without noticing, my internal question changed. Instead of asking, ‘What do I think is right here?’, I began asking, ‘What would he want?’ or ‘How would he do this?’ That became the reference point for decision after decision. At the time, I thought I was learning. In some ways I probably was. But I was also slowly handing over something a leader cannot afford to outsource indefinitely: my own judgement.

    The unsettling part is that I did not recognise what was happening while I was inside it. The relationship had become normal to me. When that leader eventually left, I stood and applauded him with everybody else. It was only later, during a period of structured reflection, that I began to understand what those years had done to me. I had very little confidence in my own leadership judgement. I felt like a shell of the person I might have been. That does not mean every decision I had made was wrong, nor does it make somebody else responsible for everything I did. I was still the leader people experienced. If I was impatient, hesitant, overly compliant or unwilling to challenge, the people around me could not be expected to see the more confident leader I believed existed somewhere underneath. They experienced the person who turned up. That is an uncomfortable but necessary distinction. Context can explain our behaviour. It does not erase its effect on other people.

    One meeting from that period has stayed with me for nearly twenty years. There were four of us in the room. A colleague offered some feedback that our leader did not like, and he began pressing her for the names of the people behind it. She resisted. She explained that the names were not necessary. He kept pushing. Eventually, under the pressure, she gave them. Afterwards she turned to the other colleague and me and told us, in very direct terms, that we should have backed her up. We had both stayed silent. She was right. I remember the shame of it even now. What makes the memory important is not that speaking up would necessarily have changed the outcome. It probably would not. The leader may still have insisted. But my colleague would not have been standing there alone. I had confused the likelihood of changing the decision with the value of taking a position. They are not the same thing.

    Image Article 025 02

    If the same meeting happened today, I would speak. That does not mean I now believe a leader should challenge everything immediately. Quite the opposite. There are times when I deliberately stay quiet because I know the decision has already been made, the room is not capable of hearing the argument, or I need time to think before I know what I genuinely believe. Silence can be thoughtful. So can a pause. The question is what is making the decision. Am I choosing not to speak because I have judged that this is not the right moment, or has fear chosen for me? Am I delaying my response because I want it to be constructive, or because I am hoping the problem will disappear? Two people can behave identically from the outside and be doing something completely different internally. That is why leadership cannot be reduced to a list of visible behaviours. The deeper work is understanding what sits beneath them.

    That lesson became clearer under a later leader. We were very different people and, at the time, I was probably a considerable pain in the backside. We disagreed. We had fierce conversations. I did not always jump into those conversations immediately, but when something mattered I learned to stand my ground. At the end of her tenure, she publicly thanked me for those conversations. Years later, we remain in touch and I admire what she has gone on to do. The significance for me is not that I had become more argumentative. It is that disagreement had become possible without me disappearing inside somebody else’s leadership. I could respect another leader, learn from them and adapt to them without continually asking what version of me they wanted. That was a much healthier form of loyalty: one in which neither agreement nor disagreement required either of us to stop being ourselves.

    Image Article 025 03

    This is where the language of authenticity can become dangerous if we are not careful. ‘This is just who I am’ is not a leadership philosophy. It can become a convenient defence against growth. I am not the same leader I was twenty years ago, and I would be disappointed if I were. Experience should change us. Feedback should change us. Mistakes certainly should. The question is not whether we change, but what we are prepared to change. I have become more comfortable with flexibility in style, approach, timing and method. Leadership cannot be pure black and white. Different organisations need different things, and I know now that I will suit some far better than others. But there is a point where flexibility stops being adaptation and begins to feel like surrender. For me, that boundary is principle. Principles can sometimes bend under the complexity of real life. If I am being asked to break one, particularly trust, I know something more fundamental is wrong.

    Trust is also why leadership occasionally requires us to tolerate being misunderstood. There have been decisions in my career that looked strange to other people because I held information I was not free to share. Confidentiality creates an uncomfortable asymmetry: somebody may be judging your decision without having access to the facts that shaped it. The temptation is to defend yourself by revealing just enough to make the criticism go away. But if doing so breaks somebody else’s confidence, the price is too high. Even at home, where I am fortunate to have someone I trust completely and who is an excellent sounding board, there have been times when I could not provide every detail. I can invite challenge. I can listen carefully. But I cannot hand responsibility for the decision to somebody else, and I cannot use another person’s confidential information simply to make myself easier to understand.

    Image Article 025 04

    That distinction has become increasingly important to me. Early in my career, I looked upwards for the answer: what does the boss want? Now I actively value people who will tell me when they think I am wrong, but their challenge does not replace my judgement. It improves it. There is a considerable difference between seeking a sounding board and seeking permission. The first can make us more thoughtful; the second can slowly make us dependent. Sometimes, after listening to people I respect, I will still reach a different conclusion. I am comfortable with that in a way I was not when I was younger. Leadership involves moments when you cannot make everybody agree with you, and sometimes cannot even give them all the information that might help them understand you. The question then becomes whether you can stand behind the decision without becoming defensive, secretive or dismissive of the people questioning it.

    Perhaps that is why I now think the smallest interactions deserve attention without turning them into a scorecard. Saying please and thank you will not make somebody an ethical leader. Holding the door for a stranger will not prove they can handle a crisis. But repeated behaviours create a kind of leadership texture. People learn whether you notice them. They learn whether status changes the respect you offer. They learn whether frustration makes you unpredictable. They learn whether difficult information is safe to bring to you. They learn whether your values survive inconvenience. None of this happens through a single grand declaration. It happens through hundreds of encounters that neither person may remember individually. Eventually, people stop asking which version of the leader they are going to get because experience has answered the question for them.

    For me, that consistency is closely connected to trust. I hope people who have worked with me would say that what they saw was broadly what they got. Not that I was always right, always calm or always easy to work with. I have enough memories to know otherwise. Consistency does not mean producing the same response to every situation. Sometimes leadership requires patience; sometimes challenge. Sometimes openness; sometimes confidentiality. Sometimes speaking; sometimes deliberately waiting. The consistency has to sit deeper than the behaviour itself. It is whether people can recognise the same underlying person across those different responses. Do I still treat people with dignity when I am frustrated? Do I protect trust when explaining myself would be easier? Can I disagree without making the relationship disposable? Can I change my mind without pretending I never held the previous view? Those are harder tests than remembering good manners, but good manners can be one small expression of the same underlying thing.

    Image Article 025 05

    If I could return to that meeting nearly twenty years ago and speak to the younger version of myself who stayed silent, I do not think I would tell him to be braver. I would ask him a question: ‘Help me understand why you’re silent.’ I would want him to discover the answer rather than borrow mine. Perhaps he would realise that fear was making the decision. Perhaps he would recognise how much of his leadership had become an attempt to satisfy somebody above him. And perhaps that understanding would give him a choice he did not realise he had. That, more than any particular behaviour, is what experience has given me. I am more comfortable with myself as a leader because I understand myself better. I know more clearly what can flex, what I need help seeing, and where I am no longer willing to surrender my judgement simply to make leadership easier.

    Twenty years from now, I doubt the achievements will be the part that matters most to me. Achievements in organisations are rarely ours alone anyway. They depend on teams, timing, opportunity, resources and plenty of things no individual leader controls. The part I can take responsibility for is the person I was while all of that was happening. Did people know where they stood with me? Could they trust me? Did I remain recognisably myself when the pressure increased, while still allowing experience to change me for the better? Leadership gives us responsibility for many things we can influence but never fully control. Our own behaviour is different. We will still get it wrong. We will still have bad days. But across the accumulation of ordinary moments, we are continually answering a quieter question: when leadership costs me something, who am I choosing to become?

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.

  • The Opposite of Avoidance Is Not Confrontation

    The Opposite of Avoidance Is Not Confrontation

    No one particularly enjoys the moment when a leadership problem becomes impossible to ignore. A conversation needs to happen. A behaviour has crossed a line. Two people are no longer working well together. Something does not quite add up. We know we should probably say something, yet another voice begins negotiating for time. Perhaps tomorrow would be better. Perhaps we need more information. Perhaps emotions will settle. Perhaps the whole thing will sort itself out. Sometimes that voice is right. Sometimes waiting is exactly what good leadership requires. The difficulty is that avoidance rarely announces itself as avoidance. It tends to arrive dressed as patience, fairness, caution or good judgement.

    For a long time, my own relationship with difficult conversations moved between two unhelpful extremes. Earlier in my leadership, I could leave things too long. I did not particularly want the confrontation, I worried about relationships and, if I am being truthful, I wanted people to like me. Later, I moved too far the other way. I became more willing to have the conversation, but sometimes the motivation was hardly more sophisticated: I wanted the problem off my workload and out of my head. I had stopped avoiding the conversation, but I had not necessarily become better at it. I had simply found a different way of allowing my own discomfort to determine the timing.

    That distinction matters. We often talk about avoidance as though its opposite is courage: one leader ducks the difficult conversation while another marches confidently towards it. Experience has made me much less convinced by that picture. A leader can act too quickly for exactly the same self-centred reason that another leader waits too long. One wants to escape the discomfort by postponing it; the other wants to escape the discomfort by getting it over with. In both cases, the decision is being shaped by what makes the leader feel better rather than by what the situation actually needs. The opposite of avoidance is not confrontation. It is judgement.

    I learned some of that through relatively ordinary situations. Someone might call in sick, for example, and later I would see photographs suggesting they had been out socially that evening. At one stage in my career, I could move very quickly from seeing the photograph to deciding I understood what had happened. The conversation could begin from accusation rather than curiosity: what on earth are you doing? Yet a photograph is not a complete account of somebody’s circumstances. It may raise a legitimate question, but it does not answer it. There may be information I do not have. The better conversation is much simpler: I know you called in sick, and I am also aware you were socialising that evening. Help me understand.

    Those three words, help me understand, have become increasingly important to me. They do not remove accountability and they are not a clever way of pretending a problem does not exist. They create space between evidence and conclusion. I can explain what I understand, listen to the other person’s account and see whether those accounts match. If they do not, the conversation can continue: this is my understanding; this is what you are explaining; help me understand the difference. Sometimes the other person supplies information that genuinely changes the picture. Sometimes they recognise that they have made a mistake. Sometimes they defend their position. And occasionally they continue insisting on an account even when further evidence points overwhelmingly elsewhere.

    Image Article 024 02

    I have been in that last situation too. I had strong evidence of a serious failing, but I did not begin by laying every piece of it on the table. That was not an attempt to trap anyone. I wanted to give the person an opportunity to explain, to take ownership and perhaps to tell me something I did not know. They continued to deny what had happened until I eventually presented evidence that left virtually no room for dispute. They then backtracked and apologised. The original failing mattered, but something else had now entered the relationship: trust. Once you believe somebody has knowingly lied to you, future situations do not arrive untouched by the past. I found myself becoming more distant and less tolerant. New incidents were harder to judge as genuinely new incidents because I was already wondering whether I was seeing a repeat of an established pattern.

    That is not necessarily a comfortable admission for a leader. We like to imagine that we approach every situation neutrally, but trust changes how we interpret what happens next. Some caution is justified. Trust is supposed to mean something. Yet there is also a danger that accountability becomes prejudice against the person, with every future mistake interpreted through an old one. I find dishonesty particularly difficult to move beyond. With children, I have always understood that lying can be part of development and that one of our responsibilities as adults is to teach what dishonesty does to trust. With adults, I am less forgiving. Most mistakes can be worked with. Most difficult situations can be discussed, repaired or learned from. But if I cannot rely on the account I am being given, even helping to fix the original problem becomes harder.

    I sometimes think of trust as a sheet of paper. Before anything happens, it is flat and unmarked. A lie crumples it. You can flatten the paper again. You can continue to use it. You may repair the relationship and build considerable trust again. But you cannot pretend the creases were never there. That is one reason telling the truth matters even when the truth is uncomfortable. A difficult fact gives people something real to work with. A lie creates a second problem on top of the first. In that sense, dishonesty and leadership avoidance have something in common: both can protect the present moment by transferring a larger cost into the future.

    The same pattern appears when feedback becomes so careful that nobody knows what has actually been said. We tell ourselves we are being kind, but sometimes we are protecting ourselves from the discomfort of clarity. It appears when conflict becomes quieter and we decide that quietness must mean resolution. It appears when visible poor behaviour is left unchallenged because we are not sure the timing is right. The issue does not necessarily remain where we left it. Other people are watching. They are interpreting. They are deciding what the silence means. A leader may think they have postponed one conversation; the team may be learning that a standard is optional.

    That has become one of the questions I ask myself more often now: if I do not tackle this, what happens next? Does the situation have a reasonable chance of working itself out, or is it likely to spread? Will relationships be damaged by my intervention, or are they already being damaged by my silence? If a member of staff is behaving in a visibly inappropriate way and colleagues can see it, doing nothing is not neutral. Behaviour can spread like a weed, not necessarily because everyone suddenly agrees with it, but because people notice what appears to be tolerated. Someone else begins to wonder why they should meet a standard that another person can ignore. What felt like a private decision about timing starts becoming a cultural decision.

    Image Article 024 03

    There is no formula for answering those questions, and I would distrust anyone who claimed there was. Experience has also taught me that some situations genuinely do work themselves out. Leaders can make things worse by inserting themselves into every disagreement, irritation or imperfection. There are times when the wisest thing I can do is sit on something, watch it and allow people the space to resolve it themselves. There are even occasions when I may consciously decide not to pursue an issue at all because the likely benefit is too small compared with the human cost. Leadership judgement includes proportionality. Not every breach needs the full weight of authority behind it.

    I remember an example from one school where I made a decision that significantly changed how a particular team worked. Rather than individuals continuing to have their own spaces, the change required them to work more closely together in a shared arrangement. The decision had been contested, but I believed it was right and, looking back, I still believe it improved things. One member of the team was deeply affected by it. I later learned that they had become visibly upset and expressed their displeasure about the decision to stakeholders who should not have been involved. It was inappropriate. An internal organisational decision had spilled into a space where it did not belong, and there were formal routes I could have taken in response.

    What I felt first was not anger so much as surprise. I had not realised quite how deeply the decision had affected them. That did not make me regret the decision, and understanding their reaction did not make their behaviour acceptable. But it changed what I thought the moment required. I did not need to prove that I was in charge, nor did I need a grand confrontation. I simply made it clear that I knew what had happened, asked them not to repeat it and set the boundary that if they needed to talk about the decision, they should do so with an appropriate colleague rather than involving people who had no place in the disagreement. That was enough.

    Younger me might have made more of it, partly because younger me sometimes felt there was something to prove. That is another way discomfort can distort leadership. We can avoid a conversation because we fear disapproval, but we can also enlarge a conversation because we fear appearing weak. Authority becomes something to demonstrate rather than something to use carefully. Experience has made me more interested in the smallest intervention that genuinely deals with the problem. Understanding does not mean excusing. Accountability does not automatically mean punishment. A boundary can be firm without becoming theatrical.

    Image Article 024 04

    The desire to be liked sits underneath more of this than leaders sometimes admit. I do not find that particularly shameful. Human beings are social creatures. Most of us would rather belong than be rejected, and most leaders would prefer colleagues to think well of them. The problem begins when being liked becomes part of the decision test. Organisations have purposes, values and responsibilities. Leaders occupy roles within them for a reason. If preserving one person’s approval prevents us from addressing behaviour that affects everybody else, we have lost sight of that purpose. Ironically, avoiding one person’s disapproval can cost the respect of many more people who are watching what we choose not to do.

    I used to worry about what someone might say about me after a difficult conversation: whether they would complain to colleagues, damage the relationship or present their own version of events. Those things can happen. But there is another audience we easily forget. What are the people who have watched the problem go unaddressed saying about our inaction? A one to one conversation at least gives us some opportunity to listen, clarify, explain and repair. Once frustration has spread through a team, we have far less control over what the issue becomes. Silence does not protect a leader’s reputation. Sometimes it simply allows the situation to rot beyond the room in which it could originally have been resolved.

    This is where the cost of avoidance becomes visible. I have seen frustration in people’s faces when they have been carrying something for longer than they should because I had not acted soon enough. At that point, the original problem is no longer the only problem. They have also had to live with my reluctance to address it. I still believe the leader ultimately owns that failure. When credit is due, give it to the team; when criticism comes, protect the team. But accepting responsibility afterwards does not erase the cost other people paid while we were waiting. Avoidance often sends the bill to somebody else first.

    Uncertainty creates a similar temptation. I have sat in meetings listening to people use language I did not understand and felt reluctant to admit it. In some environments, saying that you do not understand can feel like exposing a weakness. I have left the room and asked someone I trusted to explain afterwards. Yet when I have led my own meetings, I have often been perfectly comfortable stopping someone and saying that I do not understand the term they have used. Part of that is relational. There are people around whom I am comfortable showing vulnerability and others around whom I am not. I do not believe leaders need to expose every uncertainty to every audience. Context matters.

    Still, the temptation to appear certain deserves attention because it is another version of the same problem. We can pretend to understand because admitting that we do not feels uncomfortable. We can answer too quickly because leaders are supposed to have answers. We can hide uncertainty behind impressive language. Yet if the people around us do not understand that language either, particularly in organisations where many colleagues use English as an additional language, sophistication can become a barrier rather than a strength. Sometimes the most useful person in the room is the one secure enough to say, I do not know what that means. Can you explain it? Honest uncertainty gives other people permission to stop pretending too.

    None of this means leaders should become endlessly hesitant, gathering information long after the picture is clear. Seeking understanding can itself become a sophisticated form of avoidance. There comes a point when the accounts have been heard, the evidence is sufficiently consistent and continuing to investigate is simply postponing responsibility. At that point, people deserve clarity. They deserve the opportunity to take ownership of what happened, to apologise where appropriate, to repair what can be repaired and to understand what needs to change. Patience should help somebody grow. It should not become a hiding place for a leader who does not want to make a decision.

    The judgement, then, is not between being a leader who confronts and a leader who avoids. It is between allowing discomfort to make the decision and carrying that discomfort long enough to make the decision ourselves. Sometimes that means acting quickly because delay will damage trust, fairness or standards. Sometimes it means gathering another piece of information before drawing a conclusion. Sometimes it means giving two colleagues space to sort something out without us. Sometimes it means setting a quiet boundary and moving on. Sometimes it means admitting we do not know. And occasionally it means consciously letting something go because intervention would achieve little beyond proving that we had the power to intervene.

    I wish I had understood that earlier. No one likes conflict, but the conflict we create in our heads can become much larger than the conversation that is actually required. We imagine damaged relationships, anger, criticism and all the ways an uncomfortable exchange might go wrong. Then we wait, and the thing we were afraid of acquires time to become something bigger. Or we rush in, determined to prove that we are decisive, and create damage that a little curiosity might have prevented. Neither response is particularly courageous. Both can be ways of asking the situation to relieve our discomfort.

    Perhaps experience changes leadership by reducing the amount we feel we have to prove. We do not need to know every word in the meeting. We do not need everyone to like every decision. We do not need every mistake to become a demonstration of authority. We were appointed to do a job, and much of that job is quieter than the performance of leadership sometimes suggests. Notice what is happening. Understand what you can. Consider what acting now will change and what waiting will allow to change. Then make the best judgement you can and accept responsibility for it.

    The difficult part is that there will never be a rule that removes the uncertainty. Waiting can be wisdom or avoidance. Speed can be decisiveness or impatience. Vulnerability can build trust or be misplaced. Compassion can be proportionate or become a free pass. The behaviour alone does not tell us whether the leadership is good. We have to understand why we are choosing it and who will live with the consequences. That is why the question I now find more useful is not simply, should I confront this? It is harder than that: am I choosing what this situation needs, or what makes this moment easier for me?

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.

  • The Danger Of Knowing Too Soon

    The Danger Of Knowing Too Soon

    Early in my leadership career, a colleague told me something I did not particularly want to hear. She did not quite say, “You are a rubbish leader,” but that was close enough to the message. We were friends, although even that friendship was beginning to strain, because I had acquired a leadership title and apparently decided that one of its requirements was to demonstrate, repeatedly, that I knew what I was doing. I talked too much. I told people what to do. I offered opinions in areas I did not understand as well as the people doing the work every day. I was trying to prove myself, and in doing so I was becoming harder to work with.

    My first reaction was predictable: shock, followed fairly quickly by defensiveness. I asked other people what they thought, perhaps hoping they would tell me she had got it wrong. They were noticeably reluctant to do so. Nobody rushed to reassure me that I was doing a wonderful job. Their hesitation became evidence of its own. Eight years later, that same colleague told me, with characteristic directness, that I was considerably less bad at leadership than I had been when I started. We have remained in touch ever since. Somewhere across those years I had begun talking less, listening more and involving people more readily. Most importantly, I had become less preoccupied with proving that I deserved the title.

    It was an early lesson in something I have had to relearn in different forms ever since: having responsibility for a situation does not mean you fully understand it.

    The first problem is diagnosis

    Leadership advice has a tendency to jump quickly to action. Communicate clearly. Consult people. Trust your team. Be decisive. Be vulnerable. Change course when the evidence changes. All of those can be sensible, and all of them can be wrong in the wrong situation. Before deciding how to lead, there is a more basic question: what is actually happening here?

    That sounds obvious, but much of leadership takes place before we possess a complete answer. We notice a colleague becoming quieter and decide they are disengaged. We hear several complaints and conclude that the organisation wants change. We see resistance to a new initiative and assume the initiative is failing. We inherit a recurring meeting and continue holding it because that is what happens on Tuesdays. Observation quietly becomes interpretation, and interpretation becomes fact before we have noticed the transition.

    I have made that mistake. In one organisation I led, I inherited a strong message that people wanted more organisation and greater leadership presence. There was frustration about a lack of coordination. Things were not always planned far enough ahead, responsibilities could be unclear, and people wanted greater consistency. Organisation happens to be one of my strengths, so I did what seemed entirely rational: I organised. I introduced longer term planning and greater structure. To me, much of it felt straightforward. To some of the people experiencing those changes, it felt like additional workload.

    Looking back, I do not think the simple lesson is that I failed to listen. I had listened. The more uncomfortable lesson is that I heard the problem partly through the filter of what I was good at solving. People had talked about organisation, but they had also talked about presence. I responded particularly strongly to the part of the problem that fitted one of my strengths.

    That distinction matters. Leaders are often encouraged to play to their strengths, but strengths do not merely affect how we respond to problems. They can influence which problem we think we are looking at. If you are an organiser, disorder becomes especially visible. If you are highly relational, fractured relationships may command your attention. If you are commercially minded, the numbers may dominate. If your background is operational, execution may look like the answer. None of those perspectives is inherently wrong. The danger begins when our preferred lens becomes the whole picture.

    Sometimes we solve the problem we are most comfortable solving rather than the one the organisation most needs us to solve.

    Image Article 023 02

    Consultation is not the same as understanding

    This is why consultation, valuable as it is, should not be confused with understanding. We can ask many people for their views and still leave with an incomplete picture.

    I used to describe some decisions quite explicitly as consultative: this is what I am thinking, convince me otherwise. I still believe leaders should be honest about how a decision will be made. There is a real difference between a democratic decision, a consultation and a decision that ultimately sits with the leader. Pretending that every consultation is a vote is unfair to everyone involved.

    Yet I have become less comfortable with the phrase “convince me otherwise”. It places the leader’s existing position at the centre and asks everyone else to dislodge it. Even when unintended, authority changes a conversation. If the most senior person in the room announces what they believe before everyone else has spoken, some people will inevitably edit what they say. Others will unconsciously begin responding to the leader’s solution rather than thinking openly about the problem.

    A better consultation does not require the leader to arrive without a view. That would often be artificial. It requires enough openness for that view to change. There is a meaningful difference between saying, “Convince me I am wrong,” and saying, “This is where my thinking currently is, but I want to understand what you see.”

    It also acknowledges something that can make leadership decisions difficult to explain. The leader may possess information other people do not, while the people around them possess expertise the leader does not. The final decision may therefore still be unpopular. Consultation is not a promise that the majority view will prevail, nor should it be. Sometimes leaders are balancing financial constraints, confidential information, competing organisational priorities or wider considerations that cannot simply be laid on the table. People deserve honesty about the process and as much explanation as can responsibly be given, but transparency does not mean unrestricted disclosure.

    Understanding therefore requires more than collecting opinions. It requires listening closely enough to discover what sits behind them.

    Coaching offers a useful parallel. The first answer someone gives is often the easiest answer, not necessarily the fullest one. Good questioning is not an interrogation in which the leader marches through a prepared list. It is attention. You listen to the answer closely enough for it to shape what comes next, and sometimes you leave enough silence for the other person to reach the next layer themselves.

    The same principle applies outside a coaching conversation. If someone appears unusually subdued, “You look sad today” already contains a diagnosis. Perhaps they are not sad at all. Perhaps you happened to see them during one difficult moment. “How are you?” leaves more room for reality.

    The difference looks tiny, but it reveals a larger leadership discipline: separate what you have noticed from the story you have told yourself about it.

    Experience helps, until it doesn’t

    Experience should make this easier. Sometimes it does.

    Experienced leaders recognise patterns more quickly. They know which questions tend to matter. They have lived through enough difficult situations to avoid rediscovering everything from first principles. There are also circumstances in which extended consultation would be absurd. If there is an emergency, people do not need a leader to announce that they would like to begin a listening exercise. They need someone to act. Policies, expertise and previous experience exist precisely because some situations require clarity and speed.

    But experience carries its own risk.

    People often talk about having twenty years of experience as though the passage of time automatically produces wisdom. Sometimes it does. Sometimes twenty years of experience is one year of experience repeated twenty times. The difference is not time. It is whether we have continued questioning, reflecting and learning while that time has passed.

    Familiarity makes us efficient, but it can also make things disappear from view.

    I spent eighteen years in one organisation. That gave me contextual knowledge that somebody arriving from outside could not possibly possess immediately. I knew the history behind decisions, understood relationships and had watched the organisation change over many years. That knowledge had genuine value.

    It also meant there were things I had lived with for so long that I may no longer have seen them clearly enough to question them.

    A later leader arrived with a very different approach and reshaped a great deal. There were things I would have approached differently and changes I would probably have made more slowly. But with distance, I can also recognise something important: the organisation needed to move forward, and at that moment a different kind of leadership may have been exactly what it required.

    That is uncomfortable because we like to imagine experience as an uncomplicated asset. It is not. Deep contextual understanding and institutional blindness can grow from exactly the same years of service.

    Image Article 023 03

    Sometimes the practices we stop questioning are very ordinary. Meetings are a good example. A meeting can remain in the calendar long after anyone remembers why it exists. Before sending an invitation, it is worth asking a basic question: why are we meeting? Perhaps we need to decide something, solve something, clarify something, answer questions or build understanding. Perhaps there is nothing that could not be communicated more effectively another way.

    Cancelling that meeting is not poor leadership. It may simply be respect for people’s time.

    The lesson is larger than meetings. Systems acquire momentum. Processes survive their original purpose. Experienced people can become particularly vulnerable to saying, “That is how we do it here,” without noticing that the conditions which once justified it have changed.

    Diagnosis is only half the job

    Even understanding the situation does not guarantee a good response.

    I can look back at occasions when I misunderstood what was happening and then applied an approach that might have been perfectly sensible had my diagnosis been correct. I can also identify occasions when I understood the situation reasonably well and still handled it badly.

    Those are different leadership failures.

    The first is a failure of diagnosis: I solved the wrong problem.

    The second is a failure of response: I saw the problem and chose, or implemented, the wrong way of dealing with it.

    I once had to make a difficult resource decision between two competing organisational priorities. Both had value. Both had people advocating strongly for them. Resources were finite, and one area was under considerably greater pressure. After listening to the people closest to that pressure and considering the wider constraints, I made the decision to move resources towards it.

    I can still explain the reasoning behind that decision. What I did not do well enough was stay close to what happened afterwards.

    The people affected by the change had to absorb responsibilities previously held elsewhere, and I did not check in sufficiently. I did not spend enough time close to the work to understand how implementation was progressing. I had made the decision and trusted people to get on with it.

    Trust is one of the values I place highly in leadership, but even a good value can be badly applied. Trust without attention can become distance.

    Delegation does not remove a leader’s responsibility to notice what happens next. A decision is not finished when it is announced. Implementation produces new information. That information may confirm the original judgement, expose a problem in execution or reveal that the decision itself needs revisiting.

    Monitoring is not the opposite of trust when it is done properly. It is part of understanding whether what we intended is what is actually happening.

    Do not confuse responsiveness with reactivity

    This creates another difficulty. If leaders must remain open to new information, when should they stop questioning and commit?

    Change almost always creates some discomfort. A new process may initially feel slower. A reorganised team may take time to settle. People who preferred the previous arrangement may object loudly. If a leader treats every negative reaction as evidence that the decision was wrong, nothing is ever given time to work. Responsiveness then becomes reactivity, and the organisation experiences constant movement without meaningful progress.

    I tend to look for repetition and patterns. One source tells you something: listen. Several genuinely different sources begin saying the same thing: pay closer attention. The same concern keeps returning from different parts of the organisation: sit up.

    Even that is not a mathematical rule. Ten people can repeat one person’s interpretation, while a lone voice can sometimes identify a serious problem before anyone else sees it. Leadership judgement cannot be reduced to counting opinions. We have to consider the quality of the evidence, whether the sources are genuinely independent, the consequences of being wrong and how much time the situation allows.

    Eventually, though, there comes a point when continued questioning stops improving the decision. If the evidence repeatedly brings you back to the same place, decide.

    And then give the decision a chance.

    Image Article 023 04

    That does not mean becoming attached to it. If the evidence later shows that you are travelling down the wrong road, put your hands up and say so. Changing course is not necessarily inconsistency. Sometimes it is evidence that you are still paying attention.

    The responsibility then is to explain what has changed, why the original decision no longer holds and what the new direction means for people. Imagine boarding a plane knowing you are flying to Spain and discovering halfway through the journey that the pilot has changed course without saying a word. You might trust that there is a good reason, but you would reasonably expect an announcement. Not necessarily because you object to the change, but because you deserve to understand it.

    People can cope with a changed destination more readily than they can cope with unexplained uncertainty.

    Leadership is grey

    Perhaps this is why I am increasingly suspicious of leadership advice that presents a behaviour as universally good.

    Consult people, except when the situation requires immediate command. Be vulnerable, except when announcing that you have no idea what to do would destroy necessary confidence. Trust your experience, except when experience is preventing you from seeing what has changed. Move quickly, except when speed is substituting for understanding. Go slowly, except when an organisation genuinely needs disruption. Listen to your people, but remember that a vocal group is not automatically the whole organisation. Be adaptable, but do not adapt so completely that leadership becomes an act you perform rather than something you can genuinely stand behind.

    There is no contradiction in that list that can be solved by discovering the perfect leadership style.

    The contradiction is the work.

    Leadership is contextual. The same behaviour can be courageous in one situation and reckless in another. Vulnerability can create trust or anxiety. Decisiveness can provide clarity or silence expertise. Patience can allow change to embed or become an excuse for drift. The leader’s task is not to collect enough principles to eliminate judgement. It is to improve the quality of the judgement those principles inform.

    That also means recognising the limits of our own range. Leaders are not equally strong in every aspect of their role, particularly when they lead large, complex organisations filled with specialists who know their work better than the person at the top. I have led teams of sixty and a hundred people. I would be deluding myself if I claimed to understand every specialist function better than the people doing those jobs every day.

    Leadership does not require that.

    It does require creating conditions in which those people can tell you what you are missing, and being secure enough to hear them when they do.

    Sometimes the challenge goes deeper still. An approach that once served an organisation well may no longer be what it needs. A leader can adapt behaviours, learn new skills and respond differently, but adaptation has limits. There is a difference between stretching yourself and putting on an act.

    There may eventually be a difficult question for both the leader and those responsible for the organisation: does this leader need to adapt, or does this organisation now need a different kind of leader?

    That can be a horrible question precisely because nobody necessarily has to be the villain. A leader can have contributed enormously and still cease to be the right person for the next stage. Equally, a leader whose approach would be wrong for one organisation may be exactly what another needs.

    Good leadership is not necessarily permanent leadership. Effectiveness belongs partly to the relationship between a leader, a moment and an organisation.

    The pause before the decision

    None of this is an argument for endless reflection.

    Leaders who refuse to act until they possess certainty will wait forever. Decisions have to be made with incomplete information, and sometimes they will be wrong. I have often told colleagues that I would rather they act than do nothing at all.

    The aim is not to remove uncertainty. It is to resist unnecessary certainty: the confidence that the first explanation must be the right one, that our preferred strength must provide the solution, that the loudest voices represent everyone, or that because something worked before it will work again.

    If time allows, understand the situation, then make the decision.

    The words “if time allows” matter. Sometimes leadership gives you months to listen, test and think. Sometimes it gives you minutes. Occasionally it gives you seconds. Use the time the situation genuinely gives you. Go to the source rather than constructing a conclusion from everyone around it. Ask open questions. Look for patterns. Draw on expertise. Notice where your own strengths are shaping what you see. Be clear about how the decision will be made.

    Then, when the evidence keeps returning you to the same place, stop asking the question simply because another answer might feel safer.

    Image Article 023 05

    My colleague’s criticism early in my leadership career did not suddenly make me a good leader. Eight years later, even her backhanded compliment did not mean I had finished learning. If anything, the value of that relationship was that it made certainty a little less comfortable.

    I had once thought leadership meant showing people that I was ready for the role. What I gradually learned was almost the reverse. A title proved very little. Neither did having the quickest answer in the room.

    Leadership was in doing the work well enough to know when I understood, being humble enough to notice when I did not, and eventually having the courage to decide anyway.

    The danger is not that leaders sometimes get things wrong. We will.

    The greater danger may be knowing too soon.

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.

  • The Leadership People Remember Is Rarely Loud

    The Leadership People Remember Is Rarely Loud

    If you asked a hundred people to describe the best leader they have ever worked for, I suspect very few would begin by talking about a strategic plan, an inspirational keynote or an unforgettable presentation. Those moments are easy to admire because they are visible. They make excellent stories, impressive photographs and memorable LinkedIn posts. Organisations invest considerable time and money trying to create them because they feel like leadership at its most powerful. Yet, when people reflect on the individuals who genuinely changed them, their memories tend to settle somewhere much quieter. They remember conversations that happened behind closed doors, encouragement offered when confidence was low, patience shown after mistakes had been made and leaders who somehow found time when everyone else appeared too busy. The leadership people carry with them rarely announces itself with applause. More often, it reveals itself years later when they realise how profoundly they were shaped by what once felt like ordinary moments.

    For a long time, I thought this was simply coincidence. Perhaps I had been fortunate enough to work with unusually thoughtful people. Perhaps my own personality meant I noticed quieter forms of leadership more than others. The more leaders I met, however, the more convinced I became that something much deeper was happening. Somewhere along the way, many of us had started confusing visibility with effectiveness. We had become remarkably good at recognising leaders who spoke confidently, occupied the stage comfortably and projected certainty. Yet some of the most influential leaders I have known possessed none of those qualities in abundance. They did not dominate every meeting. They did not need to be the loudest voice in the room. They rarely sought attention. Instead, they quietly changed the experience of the people around them, often without ever appearing to do anything extraordinary at all.

    One leader in particular still comes to mind whenever I think about this. I first worked with him when I was living overseas for the first time. I was young, inexperienced and, although I probably hid it reasonably well, trying to find my feet in a country that felt completely unfamiliar. Like most people at the beginning of their leadership journey, I made mistakes. Looking back now, I can think of countless occasions when I misunderstood situations, misjudged decisions or simply lacked the experience to know what good leadership looked like. It would have been easy for someone in his position to become frustrated. Instead, he seemed to possess an extraordinary ability to separate the mistake from the person. I never left his office feeling diminished. I almost always left believing I could do better next time.

    Image Article 022 02



    What strikes me now is that none of the things he did would ever have appeared in a leadership handbook under the heading transformational practice. He simply made time. Whenever I needed a conversation, he found space in his diary. He knew I was living on my own, away from family and friends, and he checked in without making it feel like a formal welfare exercise. He invited colleagues to his home, not because somebody had suggested it as a team-building activity, but because relationships mattered to him. When problems arose, his instinct was not to protect his authority but to develop the people involved. There was accountability, certainly, but it always came wrapped in encouragement rather than humiliation. The question was rarely, ‘Why did this happen?’ It was much more often, ‘What have we learned, and how do we help you move forward?’

    At the time, I accepted this as normal. It was only years later, after working alongside many different leaders, that I realised how unusual it actually was. Too often, organisations unintentionally create environments where people become frightened of making mistakes because mistakes are associated with judgement rather than growth. Leaders can genuinely believe they are maintaining high standards while slowly teaching their teams that caution is safer than initiative. Creativity gives way to compliance. Confidence becomes dependency. People stop bringing ideas because experience has taught them that avoiding criticism is easier than risking innovation. None of this happens overnight. Like almost everything in leadership, it happens quietly.

    Years later, after we had both moved on, I happened to meet him again. By then he had gone on to lead a significantly larger organisation, achieving the kind of success that many ambitious leaders spend their careers chasing. Yet the first thing he did was exactly what he had always done. He stopped. He smiled. He made time. There was no sense that his growing responsibilities had somehow made him too important for ordinary conversations. Success had changed the scale of his work, but it had not changed the person doing it. Looking back, I realise that may have been his greatest strength. Leadership had never become a performance. It remained an expression of who he already was.

    I was therefore completely unsurprised when, after more than two years of working with him, our staff gave him a standing ovation. Not because he had delivered one remarkable speech or masterminded one spectacular initiative, but because everyone in that room had experienced hundreds of small moments that, when added together, told exactly the same story. He listened. He noticed people. He developed others. He remained calm under pressure. He treated individuals with dignity even when difficult conversations were required. The applause lasted only a few minutes, but it represented something that had been built patiently over years.

    “I want to be the architect of my own irrelevance, empowering others to such an extent that I am no longer needed.”

    Image Article 022 03



    At first, I simply thought it was an interesting expression. As the years passed, I realised it described a philosophy that stood in direct contrast to much of what I was seeing elsewhere. Many leaders become increasingly central as they become increasingly senior. More decisions require their approval. More people rely on their judgement. More meetings cannot begin until they arrive. They become the person through whom everything must pass. Ironically, the more capable they become, the more indispensable they appear. It often looks like strong leadership from the outside. In reality, it can quietly become the greatest barrier to an organisation’s growth.

    The philosophy behind becoming ‘the architect of my own irrelevance’ is deeply counter cultural because it challenges one of leadership’s greatest temptations: the desire to remain indispensable. There is something undeniably satisfying about being the person everyone turns to. It feels validating to be the individual who always has the answer, who resolves every dispute and who makes every important decision. Colleagues appreciate your experience, people seek your opinion and the organisation appears to function because of your involvement. Yet there is a subtle danger hidden inside that success. The more indispensable a leader becomes, the less capable everyone else has the opportunity to become. Without ever intending to, a leader can become the bottleneck through which every decision, conversation and initiative must pass. Eventually, progress slows not because people lack ability, but because they have learned to wait.

    Looking back across my own career, I can now see how often leadership quietly reveals itself in these seemingly insignificant moments. A meeting begins five minutes late because everyone is waiting for one person. A colleague hesitates before speaking because they are unsure how their contribution will be received. Someone leaves a room feeling slightly smaller than when they entered it, not because of anything dramatic that was said, but because they were interrupted, overlooked or dismissed. Equally, another colleague leaves believing they are capable of far more than they imagined because a leader noticed potential that they could not yet see in themselves. None of those moments will appear in an annual report. None will feature in a strategic plan. Yet those are precisely the moments that determine whether people choose to bring their best selves to work tomorrow.

    This is why I have become increasingly sceptical of leadership conversations that focus primarily on visibility. We often ask whether leaders are visible enough, whether they communicate enough or whether they inspire enough. Those questions matter, but they are incomplete. Visibility, in itself, is neutral. A leader can be highly visible while quietly damaging trust, just as another can be relatively understated while building extraordinary commitment. The real question is not how often people see their leader. It is how people consistently feel after spending time with them. Do they leave conversations feeling more confident or less? More trusted or more controlled? More capable or more dependent? Leadership leaves an emotional footprint long before it leaves measurable outcomes.

    That is why I find myself returning repeatedly to the ordinary experiences that first shaped my own understanding of leadership. I remember being trusted before I fully believed I deserved that trust. I remember conversations where difficult feedback was delivered honestly but without ever making me feel diminished. I remember mistakes becoming opportunities to learn rather than occasions to assign blame. Above all, I remember consistency. The leader I admired most was not occasionally kind or occasionally thoughtful. He was relentlessly consistent. Whether the conversation was easy or difficult, whether the day had gone well or badly, whether he was speaking to the newest member of staff or the most experienced leader in the organisation, there was an unmistakable sense that people mattered.

    Perhaps that is why the standing ovation has remained with me for so many years. It was not a spontaneous reaction to one emotional occasion. It was the visible expression of hundreds of invisible moments. Every conversation, every decision, every act of encouragement and every quiet demonstration of integrity had accumulated until they became impossible to separate from the person himself. When the applause finally came, it was not really for a speech or a project or a successful year. It was for the experience of being led by someone whose behaviour had remained remarkably consistent over time.

    Image Article 022 04



    There is an important lesson in that for every leader, regardless of sector or title. We often overestimate the influence of our biggest moments while underestimating the influence of our smallest ones. We carefully prepare presentations, speeches and strategic launches, yet forget that people are watching us on ordinary Tuesday mornings just as closely. They notice whether we listen, remain calm under pressure, give credit generously, admit mistakes honestly and treat people with the same respect when nobody else is watching. Long before people believe what a leader says, they decide whether they believe what a leader consistently does.

    The irony is that none of this requires extraordinary charisma. It requires extraordinary consistency. It asks leaders to replace performance with presence, authority with curiosity and control with development. It asks them to recognise that their greatest legacy is unlikely to be a document they wrote or a strategy they launched. More often, it will be found in the confidence they quietly built in other people. The finest leaders eventually become visible not because they sought attention, but because the people they developed begin achieving things they could never have achieved alone.

    That is why I no longer believe the most important question in leadership is, ‘How can I become more influential?’ A better question might be, ‘What do people consistently experience when they work alongside me?’ The answer is found in the ordinary moments that are so easy to overlook because they never feel particularly important at the time.

    Years after the speeches have been forgotten, the strategies replaced and the organisational structures redesigned, people will still remember how their leaders made them feel. They will remember whether someone believed in them before they believed in themselves, whether failure became a reason to stop or an opportunity to grow, and whether leadership quietly drew out the very best within them. Looking back, I can barely remember a single speech my former leader gave. I cannot tell you what was on the agenda of most meetings we attended together. Yet I still remember how he led people. Perhaps that tells us everything we need to know. Great leadership is rarely remembered because of its biggest moments. It is remembered because, in thousands of ordinary moments, somebody quietly made us believe we could become more than we thought we were.

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.

  • Hiring Is Never About Certainty

    Hiring Is Never About Certainty

    Some of the best recruitment decisions I have ever made surprised me. So did some of the worst. I have interviewed candidates who seemed exceptional, impressed every member of the interview panel and appeared to be exactly what the organisation needed, only to discover later that they struggled in the role. Equally, I have appointed people at the very last minute, wondering whether we had taken too great a risk, only to watch them become some of the finest colleagues I have ever worked alongside. Those experiences taught me something that no recruitment course ever really explains. Hiring is never about certainty. It is about making the best judgement you can with the evidence available at the time.

    That is what makes recruitment one of leadership’s greatest responsibilities. Every appointment changes an organisation in ways that are impossible to predict completely. The right person strengthens culture, improves relationships and quietly raises the standards of everyone around them. The wrong appointment does the opposite, often creating challenges that last far longer than anyone imagined during the interview. It is tempting to believe there is a perfect recruitment process that guarantees success, but after many years of interviewing candidates, reading references and appointing colleagues, I have become convinced that no such process exists. Good recruitment is not about removing uncertainty. It is about managing it wisely.

    Beyond the Interview

    Image Article 021 02

    One of the biggest mistakes organisations make is placing too much weight on interview performance. Interviews reward a very particular set of skills. They favour people who think quickly, communicate confidently and remain composed under pressure. Those qualities are valuable, but they are not the job itself. Some people interview brilliantly and then struggle to collaborate, accept feedback or deliver consistently once they arrive. Others leave the interview convinced they have underperformed, yet quietly become some of the strongest people in the organisation.

    That is why I have always preferred interviews that gradually become conversations. Once candidates begin to relax, they stop performing quite so much. The rehearsed answers become less important and genuine curiosity begins to emerge. You discover how they think, how they listen, what excites them and whether they are interested only in securing the role or in contributing to something bigger than themselves. By the end of a good interview, I am not trying to decide whether somebody impressed me. I am trying to decide whether this is someone I could genuinely work alongside for years to come.

    Looking For Character, Not Clones

    Image Article 021 03

    Recruitment is also full of hidden biases. Human beings naturally feel comfortable with people who communicate in familiar ways, share similar experiences or remind us of ourselves. Left unchecked, those preferences quietly influence our decisions. We begin mistaking familiarity for suitability, often without realising it. Diverse interview panels, structured questioning and careful professional discussion all help reduce that risk because they force us to challenge our own assumptions rather than simply confirming them.

    The strongest appointments I have made have rarely been people who thought exactly like me. What mattered far more was whether they believed in the purpose of the organisation. In every sector there is a mission that should sit above individual ambition. The candidates who stand out are usually the ones who ask thoughtful questions about that purpose, the people they will be serving and the difference they hope to make. Salary, progression and opportunities all matter, and sensible candidates should ask about them, but I have always been drawn towards people whose attention naturally turns towards the organisation before it turns towards themselves. Skills can be developed. Knowledge can be taught. Shared values are much harder to create after someone has joined.

    Recruitment Is a Two Way Conversation

    Image Article 021 04

    Organisations sometimes forget that interviews are not one sided assessments. Every interaction is shaping the candidate’s opinion just as much as the candidate is shaping ours. Long before the first formal question is asked, people are already deciding what it might feel like to work there. They notice how reception staff are treated, whether interviewers are prepared, whether meetings begin on time and whether conversations feel welcoming or transactional. Small details that seem insignificant to the organisation often become powerful indicators of culture for the person sitting across the table.

    The same continues once an offer has been accepted. People begin deciding whether they belong remarkably quickly. Formal inductions are important, but belonging is usually created through ordinary conversations, thoughtful gestures and colleagues who make someone feel genuinely welcome. Recruitment therefore extends far beyond selecting the right person. It includes demonstrating the culture you hope they will experience and ensuring their first impressions are reinforced rather than contradicted once they arrive.

    Judgement, Responsibility and Patience

    Image Article 021 05

    One area that should never be compromised is safe and responsible recruitment. Every organisation has a duty to carry out appropriate background checks, verify information carefully and follow the procedures designed to protect colleagues, customers and those they serve. These safeguards are not bureaucratic obstacles that delay recruitment. They are essential responsibilities. Confidence, charisma and an outstanding interview should never persuade us to ignore the checks that exist for very good reasons. Responsible recruitment protects far more than today’s vacancy. It protects the future of the organisation itself.

    Patience is equally important. Vacancies create pressure. Teams become stretched, workloads increase and everyone understandably wants the problem solved as quickly as possible. Yet experience has taught me that appointing the wrong person usually creates far more work than waiting a little longer for the right one. I have chosen not to appoint anyone on several occasions because none of the candidates felt right. It was never an easy decision. Everyone had to carry additional work for a while, including me, but the alternative would almost certainly have been worse. A poor appointment demands endless time, energy and management that could have been invested elsewhere. A vacancy creates temporary pressure. The wrong appointment can create years of it.

    Recruitment will never become an exact science, and perhaps that is exactly as it should be. Human beings are wonderfully complex, capable of surprising us in both positive and disappointing ways. The responsibility of leadership is not to predict the future perfectly but to make thoughtful, fair and well-informed judgements with the information available. Every interview, every conversation, every reference and every observation contributes another piece to the picture, but none of them tells the whole story on its own.

    That is why hiring is never about certainty. It is about judgement, patience and the courage to wait when the right person has not yet appeared. Because while vacancies eventually disappear, the people we choose shape our organisations long after the interview has ended.

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.

  • Culture Is Built In Ordinary Moments

    Culture Is Built In Ordinary Moments

    Culture is often spoken about as though it is something leaders create through vision statements, strategic plans or carefully designed initiatives. Organisations invest considerable time defining values, launching campaigns and explaining the behaviours they hope to see. While those things all have an important role to play, I have gradually become convinced that culture is built somewhere much quieter than that. It develops through the ordinary moments that most people barely notice at the time but quietly remember afterwards. A conversation in a corridor. A promise that is either kept or forgotten. The way someone responds when challenged. Whether people feel listened to or dismissed. Over time, those small experiences begin to answer an important question for everyone in the organisation: What is it really like to work here?

    The interesting thing is that leaders rarely recognise which moments are shaping that answer. We often imagine people paying attention during presentations, staff meetings or major announcements. In reality, people are usually watching what happens in between. They notice how we react when things go wrong, whether we make time for people when we are busy, how we speak to those who cannot offer us anything in return and whether our everyday behaviour reflects the values we so confidently talk about. Culture is rarely built through dramatic moments. It is built because people quietly observe ordinary ones.

    People Notice More Than You Think

    Image Article 020 02

    Looking back over my own career, I have been surprised by the number of times colleagues have remembered things that I considered completely insignificant. Some have mentioned birthday cards I had written years earlier. Others remembered seeing me helping with practical jobs that simply needed doing. One colleague even recalled walking past and seeing me assembling resources that would make somebody else’s day a little easier. None of those moments were planned. I was not consciously trying to demonstrate leadership or create a particular culture. They simply felt like the right things to do.

    What fascinated me was not that people remembered the tasks themselves. They remembered what those tasks seemed to represent. Quietly helping with work that needed doing suggested that no job was beneath anyone. Taking time to recognise birthdays suggested that people mattered beyond their job titles. Small acts of courtesy suggested that respect was something to be lived rather than spoken about. Those interpretations never crossed my mind at the time, yet they became part of how people experienced the organisation. It taught me that the moments leaders think are ordinary are often the very moments everyone else finds most revealing.

    The Standards People Really See

    Image Article 020 03

    One of the easiest mistakes leaders make is believing that culture is shaped primarily by what we say. We explain expectations, publish values and encourage people to behave in particular ways, yet teams rarely judge culture by speeches or policies alone. They judge it by consistency. They notice whether difficult conversations are welcomed or quietly discouraged. They notice whether everybody is treated with the same level of respect. They notice who receives recognition, who is overlooked and whether promises survive contact with reality.

    This is particularly true when conversations become uncomfortable. Leaders often ask why people stop raising concerns or offering honest feedback. More often than not, the answer is not hidden in one dramatic event. It is found in dozens of small interactions where someone was interrupted, an idea was dismissed too quickly or bad news was met with visible frustration. None of those moments may have seemed important on their own, but together they gradually taught people that silence felt safer than honesty. Equally, when leaders consistently listen, remain calm, explain decisions and respond respectfully even when challenged, people begin to believe that speaking honestly is genuinely worthwhile. Culture is shaped not by isolated incidents but by repeated experiences.

    Respect Is Never a Small Thing

    Image Article 020 04

    Perhaps the simplest lesson I have learnt is that basic respect never goes unnoticed. Holding a door open, saying thank you, making time for a conversation or treating everybody with the same courtesy regardless of their role are hardly revolutionary leadership techniques. In truth, I do not even think of them as leadership behaviours. They are simply good manners. They are the sort of things my parents expected long before I ever held a leadership position.

    That is why I have always found it slightly uncomfortable when people assume a leadership title somehow places someone above everyone else. Different roles carry different responsibilities, but they do not change the value of the people doing them. If anything, leadership should increase our responsibility to treat people well, not reduce it. The privilege of leading others should never become an excuse to expect different treatment. In my experience, people remember how leaders make them feel long after they have forgotten the details of meetings, strategies or organisational charts.

    Leadership Without Performance

    There is, however, another danger that comes with leadership. Once people realise they are being observed, it can become tempting to perform leadership instead of simply living it. Every action becomes carefully considered. Every conversation becomes an opportunity to demonstrate the values we hope others will admire. Ironically, that is often when authenticity begins to disappear. People are remarkably perceptive. They can usually sense the difference between behaviour that comes naturally and behaviour that has been carefully designed to create a particular impression.

    I have never wanted people to think of me as someone performing the role of leader. If somebody joined my team on Monday, I would hope that by Friday they simply thought I was normal. Someone they could speak honestly with because I would speak honestly with them. Someone who understood that every person was contributing towards the same purpose, simply from different positions within the organisation. Titles matter for accountability, but they should never become barriers between people. Leadership is a privilege, and privileges should never be abused.

    Perhaps that is why I have become increasingly convinced that culture cannot be manufactured. It grows from the countless ordinary moments that leaders often overlook and everyone else quietly notices. Every interaction either reinforces or weakens the environment people experience each day. Every promise either strengthens or weakens credibility. Every act of respect or disregard quietly shapes what others come to believe is normal. We rarely build culture through grand gestures. We build it through ordinary moments, repeated often enough that they simply become the way things are done.

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.

  • Building Teams That Actually Work

    Building Teams That Actually Work

    One of the most common pieces of leadership advice is that great leaders build trust. It appears in books, training courses and conference presentations. We are told to create trust, develop trust and strengthen trust, as though it were simply another item on a leadership action plan.

    The longer I have spent leading teams, the less convinced I have become that trust is something a leader can deliberately build.

    Relationships can be built. Clear communication can be developed. Shared expectations can be established. Leaders can become more transparent, more consistent and more dependable. They can keep promises, admit mistakes and deal fairly with people. All of those things matter enormously. But trust itself remains outside the leader’s control because it is not something we decide for other people. It is something other people gradually choose to give us.

    That distinction changes how we think about building teams.

    Strong Teams Are Built Before They Are Needed

    Image Article 019 02

    Many organisations only start thinking seriously about teamwork when something begins to go wrong. A project starts slipping behind schedule. Relationships become strained. Pressure increases. Suddenly everyone is encouraged to collaborate more effectively and support one another.

    Unfortunately, that is often too late.

    The strongest teams I have worked with invested in their relationships long before they needed to rely on them. Trust was built through ordinary conversations rather than extraordinary events. People helped each other without keeping score. They challenged ideas without questioning motives. They learnt how one another worked before the stakes became high enough for mistakes to feel dangerous.

    When genuine pressure eventually arrived, those foundations were already there.

    High performing teams rarely discover trust during difficult times. Difficult times simply reveal whether trust already existed.

    Trust Cannot Be Demanded

    Image Article 019 03

    Early in one leadership role, I inherited a wider team that appeared positive on the surface. People were polite, supportive in meetings and generally enthusiastic about the future. Yet underneath, there was far less openness than first appeared. Difficult conversations often happened behind closed doors rather than around the table. People were comfortable agreeing publicly while expressing very different views privately.

    That experience taught me something important.

    The absence of disagreement is not evidence of trust.

    In fact, teams that never disagree often worry me more than teams that occasionally experience healthy conflict. If people feel unable to challenge ideas, admit uncertainty or question decisions, the conversation rarely disappears. It simply moves somewhere else.

    Over time, that atmosphere changed considerably. Not because everyone suddenly agreed with every decision, but because more conversations happened openly and professionally. There were still disagreements. There always will be. The difference was that people increasingly focused on solving problems rather than protecting themselves.

    Healthy teams understand the difference between making something professional and making it personal.

    Consistency Creates Confidence

    When leaders ask how to build trust, they often begin by asking the wrong question.

    Trust is not something you can actively pursue. If it becomes your primary goal, there is a danger that leadership slowly turns into people pleasing. Decisions become driven by popularity rather than purpose. Difficult conversations are avoided because someone might be disappointed. Accountability becomes inconsistent because maintaining approval feels more important than maintaining standards.

    Instead of trying to build trust directly, I believe leaders should concentrate on doing their job exceptionally well.

    • Be clear.
    • Be consistent.
    • Keep your promises.
    • Support people when they genuinely need your support.
    • Be transparent, particularly when decisions are difficult.
    • And perhaps most importantly, avoid saying one thing publicly while saying something entirely different privately.
    • People can usually forgive mistakes. They find broken promises much harder to forget.

    Likewise, I have always respected leaders whose decisions I did not necessarily agree with because they remained consistent in applying their principles. We do not have to share someone’s perspective to respect their integrity. There is something reassuring about leaders who make difficult decisions because they genuinely believe they are right, rather than because they are trying to impress the people around them.

    Teams Build Teams

    Image Article 019 04

    One lesson that became increasingly obvious throughout my career was that leaders do not build strong teams alone.

    Every successful organisation contains people who carry enormous influence despite having no formal authority. They are trusted. They are respected. Colleagues naturally seek their advice. During periods of change, these individuals often become the bridge between leadership decisions and wider acceptance across the organisation.

    I have seen this happen repeatedly. People who were initially uncertain about change gradually became some of its strongest advocates, not because leadership persuaded them directly, but because trusted colleagues helped others understand why those changes mattered.

    That is why culture can never belong solely to the leadership team.

    Leaders establish direction. They shape expectations. They model behaviour. But culture is reinforced every day by hundreds of ordinary interactions between colleagues. Every conversation, every promise kept, every disagreement handled professionally and every small act of support quietly strengthens or weakens the team.

    The best teams do not depend on one individual. They depend on many people consistently choosing behaviours that make trust possible.

    The Goal Is Not Trust

    If a new leader asked me how to earn their team’s trust, my advice would probably surprise them.

    I would tell them to stop worrying about trust. Focus instead on leading well. Do your job properly. Make thoughtful decisions. Communicate clearly. Admit mistakes. Support people fairly. Stay true to your values even when doing so becomes uncomfortable. Over time, people will decide for themselves whether you are trustworthy.

    You cannot force that judgement. Nor should you try.

    Trust is not a leadership strategy. It is the outcome of countless decisions, conversations and behaviours that demonstrate consistency over time. The strongest teams I have worked with did not spend much time talking about trust. They simply behaved in ways that made trust feel natural. People knew what to expect from one another. Difficult conversations happened without damaging relationships. Disagreements were handled professionally rather than personally. Commitments were honoured. Support was offered freely. Performance became possible because reliability had quietly become part of the culture.

    Perhaps that is the quiet truth behind every successful team. Leaders do not build trust. They create the conditions where trust is free to grow.

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.

  • Why Good Leaders Create Space Before They Act

    Why Good Leaders Create Space Before They Act

    Leadership often appears to reward speed. We admire decisive people who respond immediately, solve problems quickly and seem to have an answer for everything. Organisations frequently reinforce this expectation. Emails demand instant replies, meetings produce immediate actions and leaders can easily feel that their value is measured by how rapidly they move from one issue to the next.

    There are certainly moments when decisive action is exactly what leadership requires. If people are at risk, if there is a safeguarding concern, a serious safety issue or a genuine crisis unfolding, hesitation can make matters worse. Leaders are entrusted with responsibility because there are occasions when someone simply has to make a decision.

    The difficulty is that most situations are not genuine crises, even though they often feel like them. Many leadership mistakes happen not because people lack ability or good intentions, but because they confuse urgency with importance. Feeling pressure to act is not always the same as needing to act.

    Over the past two decades, that may be the biggest lesson I have learnt.

    The Pressure to Act

    Image Article 018 02

    When I first moved into leadership, I suspect I behaved much like many new leaders do. There was an underlying belief that leadership meant doing something. If a concern was raised, I wanted to respond. If someone disagreed with a decision, I wanted to explain it immediately. If a situation became uncomfortable, I felt responsible for resolving it as quickly as possible.

    Looking back, I can see that some of those actions improved situations, while others simply added another layer of complexity. Experience has gradually taught me that intervention is not always the same as improvement.

    Periods of organisational change provide a good example. Leaders naturally receive feedback when introducing something new. Some of it is constructive, some emotional, some based on incomplete information and some simply reflects people’s natural uncertainty. Early in my career I sometimes felt the need to respond to every concern. What I eventually learnt was that reacting to every comment can unintentionally create more uncertainty rather than less. People often need time to experience a change before they are in a position to judge it fairly. Occasionally the wisest leadership decision is to observe, listen and allow the situation to settle before deciding whether anything actually needs to change.

    That requires confidence because choosing not to react can easily be mistaken for indecision. In reality, thoughtful restraint is often far more difficult than immediate action.

    The Confidence to Pause

    Image Article 018 03

    One phrase has stayed with me throughout my career: Don’t prove it, improve it.

    New leaders can sometimes feel pressure to prove they deserve their position. The temptation is to demonstrate leadership by making decisions quickly, offering immediate solutions or becoming involved in every issue that arises. Experienced leaders often become more comfortable with a different approach. They recognise that leadership is not about appearing busy. It is about making the best contribution to the situation in front of them.

    That does not mean becoming slow or passive. There have been occasions when I have waited too long before acting, just as there have been occasions when I have acted too quickly. Neither approach is automatically right. Leadership is not about choosing one pace. It is about recognising which pace each situation requires.

    I once worked closely with a colleague whose natural leadership style was much more direct than my own. We developed a healthy relationship because we understood our differences rather than trying to change them. Sometimes they would remind me that people needed clarity about when a decision would be made. Equally, there were occasions when I encouraged them to give a situation another twenty four hours before acting. Neither of us was trying to win the argument. We were helping each other find the right pace.

    That experience reinforced something I now believe strongly. Diverse leadership teams are valuable because they challenge one another’s instincts. Leaders who surround themselves only with people who think exactly as they do can easily mistake personal preference for good judgement.

    Creating Thinking Space

    Image Article 018 04

    As my own leadership developed, I realised that creating space was not only important for my own decisions. It also mattered for the people around me.

    Many leaders unintentionally become the answer to every question. Staff bring them decisions because they want reassurance rather than direction. Initially that can feel flattering. Over time it becomes limiting, both for the leader and for the team.

    I have always been happy for people to run ideas past me, but there were many occasions when my response afterwards was simply, “You already knew the answer.”

    That was not intended to dismiss their concerns. Quite the opposite. It was an attempt to help them recognise that they already possessed the judgement they were looking for. My role was not to become a permanent comfort blanket. My role was to help people become increasingly confident in their own decision making.

    Good leadership develops independent thinkers rather than dependent followers.

    The same principle applies during difficult conversations. When emotions are running high, people often become focused on winning the discussion rather than solving the problem. Experienced leaders recognise that very little productive thinking happens while emotions are overwhelming judgement. Before searching for solutions, they create enough space for people to think clearly again. They ask questions instead of making assumptions. They slow the conversation rather than accelerating it. They protect dignity while maintaining accountability.

    The goal is not to avoid difficult conversations. It is to make them more productive.

    Experience Changes Everything

    The leader I am today is very different from the leader I was twenty years ago.

    I am calmer than I used to be, although certainly not perfect. There are still moments when I become frustrated or disappointed, but I have learnt that my emotional response should rarely become someone else’s burden. One principle I have gradually adopted is that complaints go upwards, they should never go down. Leaders need trusted people with whom they can think aloud, reflect honestly and process difficult situations. That is one of the reasons coaching has been so valuable in my own development. Having a wife whose professional world sits completely outside education has also helped me see situations through a different lens. Fresh perspectives often create the thinking space that busy leaders struggle to give themselves.

    None of this happened overnight. It came through experience, mistakes and reflection. There have been decisions where I should have moved more quickly. Others where I should have waited longer. Leadership does not eliminate those moments. It teaches us to learn from them.

    Perhaps that is why I have become increasingly sceptical whenever leadership is presented as a collection of simple rules. There is no formula that tells you exactly when to wait and exactly when to act. Context always matters. The people matter. The culture matters. The consequences matter.

    What remains constant is the need to think before acting.

    Choosing the Right Pace

    If I could offer one piece of advice to someone beginning their leadership journey, it would not be to become slower or faster. It would be to become more deliberate.

    There will be times when immediate action is absolutely the right decision. There will be other occasions when a night’s sleep, another conversation or simply allowing people time to adjust will produce a far better outcome. Learning the difference is one of the quiet skills that experience gradually develops.

    You will make mistakes. You will occasionally react too quickly. You will sometimes hesitate when you should have acted. That is part of leadership.

    What matters is that your decisions are rooted in clear values rather than emotion, ego or the desire to prove yourself. If you genuinely believe in your organisation’s vision and values, and you consistently use them to guide your thinking, you will not make every perfect decision. None of us do. But over time, you are far more likely to make decisions that people trust, respect and understand.

    Good leaders are not remembered because they always acted first. More often, they are remembered because they created enough space for the right decision to emerge.

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.

  • Quietly Noticing Series

    Quietly Noticing Series

    Leadership can make people feel that they should always be doing something. There is a decision to make, a problem to solve, a conversation to have or a new initiative to introduce. The busier the organisation becomes, the easier it is for leaders to judge their effectiveness by how quickly they respond and how visibly they act. Yet some of the most valuable leadership information is available long before action is required. It can be found in the people others naturally turn towards when pressure increases, the small concerns raised before someone decides whether you can be trusted, the humour that brings people together or quietly leaves someone feeling exposed, and the conversations people remember because they felt genuinely heard.

    The Quietly Noticing series explored ten of these moments. None of them provides a complete picture of a person, team or organisation, and that is an important distinction. Leadership awareness should not become constant analysis, with leaders attempting to interpret every conversation, facial expression or seating arrangement as evidence of some deeper organisational problem. People should be allowed to be people. They should be able to sit with colleagues they know, have private conversations and experience ordinary working relationships without feeling that someone in authority is permanently studying them. The value of noticing is not that every observation demands intervention. It is that leaders who pay attention are more likely to recognise when something deserves curiosity, when a pattern is beginning to emerge, and when the wisest response is simply to leave people alone.

    Trust Does Not Follow the Organisational Chart

    When leaders join an organisation in a senior position, they receive authority immediately. Trust does not arrive with it. People may continue to seek advice from colleagues who have been there for years, including those in less senior positions, because those relationships have been built through shared experiences, difficult moments and hundreds of ordinary interactions. I have joined organisations in senior leadership roles and seen staff naturally turn towards longer serving colleagues for advice or reassurance. I have never regarded that as a problem. Healthy organisations contain multiple trusted people, and secure leaders should not need to become the centre of every conversation or relationship.

    Problems begin when leaders become threatened by influence they do not control. If they start enquiring into every conversation, questioning why people sought advice elsewhere or trying to position themselves as the person everyone must come to, they can create distrust while believing they are building authority. Leadership titles tell us where formal responsibility sits, but they do not determine where people feel safest asking for help. Pressure can make this distinction even clearer because people naturally look towards those who provide calm, perspective and credibility, regardless of their position. A leader who understands this does not try to eliminate informal leadership. They recognise it, respect it and, where appropriate, work with it.

    Trust also develops through the way leaders respond when people bring them information. Sometimes staff begin with something relatively small because they are trying to understand what will happen next. Will the leader listen? Will they become defensive? Will the information immediately travel upwards with their name attached? Can something be discussed without the conversation becoming an investigation into who said what? Leaders cannot promise absolute confidentiality because some information must be shared, particularly where there are serious professional, ethical or safeguarding concerns. Transparency about those limits matters. What is damaging is a culture where every concern is met with a demand to identify the person who raised it.

    I once witnessed a senior leader repeatedly pressure a colleague to reveal the name of someone who had shared information. The colleague initially held her ground, but the demands continued until the meeting became so unpleasant that she eventually gave in. The significance of that moment extended beyond the person whose identity was revealed. Everyone in the room learned something about what could happen when information travelled upwards. If leaders want people to speak openly, they need to understand that trust is shaped not only by what they say about openness, but by what people observe when someone actually takes the risk of speaking.

    Image Article 017 02

    Noticing People Without Deciding Who They Are

    One of the most damaging habits in leadership is the speed with which people can be labelled. Someone is difficult, negative, resistant, unreliable or not a team player. Sometimes there are legitimate concerns about behaviour or performance, and good leadership does not require pretending otherwise. The problem is when the judgement arrives before the curiosity. Once a senior leader has described someone in a particular way, subsequent behaviour can be interpreted through that label, and other leaders may inherit the opinion without spending enough time getting to know the individual themselves.

    I have seen this happen repeatedly throughout my career. Leaders form quick judgements, sometimes very early in their relationship with someone, and those judgements become remarkably difficult to escape. A person who challenges a decision becomes resistant. Someone who asks repeated questions becomes negative. A colleague who struggles during a difficult period becomes unreliable. The possibility that there is context underneath the behaviour gradually disappears because the organisation believes it already understands the person.

    Curiosity does not mean excusing unacceptable behaviour or avoiding difficult conversations. It means spending enough time understanding people before deciding who they are. Not every defensive reaction is evidence of a bad attitude. Not every disagreement is resistance to change. Not every difficult conversation is caused by someone refusing to cooperate. There may be frustration, embarrassment, uncertainty, previous experiences or information the leader does not yet have. Accountability and curiosity can exist together, and leaders are more likely to make fair decisions when they resist the temptation to turn their first interpretation into a permanent conclusion.

    The same restraint applies to what leaders observe in meetings and informal interactions. I have never believed that leaders need to spend excessive amounts of time analysing where everyone sits, who speaks to whom before a meeting or what every small change in behaviour might mean. In fact, publicly pointing out these patterns can backfire badly. I have seen leaders make good intentioned, humorous observations about where people sit or who they spend time with, only for individuals to feel exposed rather than included in a light hearted attempt to warm the room. Not everything a leader notices needs to be announced. Sometimes good judgement is demonstrated by noticing something and deciding that no action is required.

    The Emotional Memory of Leadership

    Many years after working with a particular leader, people may struggle to remember the exact words used in meetings or the details of individual decisions. What often remains is the emotional memory of being led by that person. I once worked with a headteacher called Eddie who had a significant influence on how I came to think about leadership. He wanted to develop people to the point where they no longer needed him in the same way. He made people feel capable and positive, even when things were difficult or they had made mistakes, and he demonstrated that accountability did not require humiliation.

    There is an important difference between feeling guilty because reflection has led you to recognise that you made a mistake and being deliberately made to feel guilty by someone in authority. The first can lead to responsibility, learning and changed behaviour. The second can gradually reduce confidence and create fear around future mistakes. Eddie did not remove accountability or pretend that problems had not occurred. He created the conditions in which people could recognise their mistakes without needing to be belittled into acknowledging them. That distinction has remained with me because I have also experienced leadership that undermined confidence over time, and the contrast between the two approaches is difficult to forget.

    Leaders need to recognise that their emotional influence extends beyond individual conversations. Emotions travel through organisations, particularly when they belong to people with positional authority. Frustration, anxiety and cynicism can spread, but so can calmness, optimism and perspective. There have been times when I have consciously tried to leave personal frustrations at the front door rather than carry them into work, although that is much easier to describe than to do consistently. Leadership does not require pretending to be unaffected by life or becoming emotionally unavailable. It requires recognising that other people should not repeatedly have to absorb the emotional instability of the person responsible for leading them.

    My own preference has always been to err towards stability while allowing some vulnerability to be visible. People do not need a leader who behaves like an emotionless rock, but neither do they need someone whose vulnerability becomes a daily organisational experience. Occasional honesty about uncertainty, disappointment or difficulty can make leadership more human. Constant emotional volatility makes people uncertain about which version of the leader will enter the room. The balance is imperfect, but the responsibility remains: leaders should understand that how they manage themselves affects far more people than themselves.

    Humour, Respect and the Small Signals of Culture

    Humour is another area where leadership awareness matters. Healthy humour can strengthen relationships, reduce tension and make organisations more enjoyable places to work, but it depends heavily on context, culture and power. I have dealt with situations where sarcasm was used with young people who did not understand the intention behind it. The adult believed they were being funny, the young person became upset, families became involved, and the situation required a conversation that could have been avoided by recognising a simple principle: humour is only shared when the people involved understand their part in it.

    The same principle applies beyond education. Humour becomes problematic when someone else repeatedly becomes the target, when there is a power imbalance that makes it difficult to object, or when cultural differences mean that the joke is not received in the way the speaker intended. Leaders should not attempt to police every joke or create workplaces where people become frightened of humour. They should, however, notice who is laughing, who is not, and whether the same individuals are repeatedly expected to absorb the joke. Healthy cultures allow people to laugh together without requiring someone else to feel smaller.

    Respect operates through similarly small moments. Throughout my career, I have seen leaders who treated everyone consistently well, leaders who were more attentive towards people outside their immediate teams, and others whose behaviour changed noticeably according to the status of the person in front of them. It has been a mixed picture, but my own view is relatively simple: manners do not cost anything. Basic respect should not depend on whether someone is senior, influential or able to advance your career.

    When I recently left an organisation, I deliberately contacted several people with whom I had not necessarily worked closely but who had quietly helped me and my family during our time there. I wanted them to know that their contribution had been noticed, and I included their line manager because appreciation should not always remain private. Leaders are often encouraged to recognise visible achievement, but reliable people working in the background can become overlooked precisely because they consistently do their jobs well. Noticing those contributions and making sure others understand their value is a small leadership action, but small actions are how people experience culture.

    Confidence That Creates Space for Others

    Some leaders appear to believe that their position requires them to constantly demonstrate expertise. They need to provide the answer, speak early, remind people of their experience or ensure that their contribution carries the greatest weight. I have never met a leader who genuinely knew everything, although I have certainly met leaders who appeared to believe that they did. The longer I have spent in leadership, the more comfortable I have become saying that I do not know, that I got something wrong or that someone else understands an issue better than I do.

    There is also a developmental responsibility here. Leaders who provide every answer can unintentionally create teams that stop looking for them. Sometimes I have deliberately held back even when I believed I had a reasonable solution because I wanted someone else to think, contribute and recognise that their expertise was needed. This should not become a performance in which leaders pretend to be less capable than they are. The purpose is to create enough space for other people to develop confidence, exercise judgement and take responsibility.

    Genuine confidence does not require leaders to prove their value in every conversation. It allows them to admit mistakes without believing their authority will disappear, invite expertise without feeling diminished by it and let someone else have the better idea. This connects directly with the kind of leadership I experienced from Eddie. The goal of leadership should not be to create people who remain dependent on the leader. It should be to develop people who increasingly think, decide and act with confidence themselves. Sometimes the most useful contribution a leader can make is to resist making themselves indispensable.

    Image Article 017 03

    Belonging Is Built Through Remembered Conversations

    Organisations invest considerable time and money in attempts to create belonging. They develop values, organise events, conduct surveys and introduce wellbeing initiatives. These things can have value, but my experience is that belonging is often built through much smaller interactions. Someone remembers something you told them several weeks earlier. They ask what happened next. They recall the name of someone important to you. They continue a conversation rather than beginning every interaction as though the previous one never happened.

    I sometimes do not see my closest friend for years, but when we meet again, the conversation continues. We remember what we discussed, return to previous stories and recognise what has changed since we last spoke. Leadership relationships are not friendships, and they should not be confused with them, but the underlying human principle is similar. Continuity tells people that they were listened to. Remembering a conversation demonstrates that the interaction mattered enough to remain with you.

    Leaders will not remember everything about everyone, particularly in large organisations, and pretending otherwise would be unrealistic. But they can make a deliberate effort to retain the things people share and return to them later. If circumstances have changed, that is fine. The act of asking still communicates interest. It tells someone that they were not simply another conversation in a busy day.

    Image Article 017 04

    This may be the central lesson running through the Quietly Noticing series. Leadership awareness is not about constantly studying people, searching for hidden meanings or turning every interaction into evidence. It is about being sufficiently present to recognise what might otherwise be missed. Who people trust when pressure increases. How leaders respond when someone takes a small risk. The damage caused by labels applied too quickly. The emotional memory created by everyday leadership behaviour. Whether humour includes people or quietly diminishes them. How people are treated when they have little status or influence. Whether confidence creates dependence or gives others room to grow. And whether people leave conversations believing that they mattered enough to be remembered.

    Great leadership will always require decisions, accountability, strategy and action. But those responsibilities are carried out through relationships, and relationships are shaped through thousands of moments that are easy to overlook. Leaders do not need to react to everything they notice. They do need to pay enough attention to recognise what deserves curiosity, what requires action and what should simply be remembered.

    Sometimes the most important thing a leader can do is notice.

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.

  • Quiet Signals Every Leader Should Notice

    Quiet Signals Every Leader Should Notice

    Leadership becomes more visible as responsibility increases, but much of the information leaders need becomes less obvious. People become more careful about what they say, hierarchy influences whether problems are raised, operational demands compete for attention, and the people doing the most preventative work can become almost invisible precisely because nothing goes wrong. Meanwhile, leaders themselves are being watched far more closely than they sometimes realise, not only during presentations, meetings and formal decisions, but in the ordinary interactions between them.

    Experience has made me more attentive to those signals, although I am wary of claiming that noticing something means I have understood it correctly. A quiet meeting may indicate frustration, fear or disengagement, but people may simply be tired. Someone hesitating before raising a concern may be responding to the leader’s previous behaviour, but cultural expectations about hierarchy may also be influencing their decision. A colleague describing a problem may want advice, reassurance, an opportunity to speak freely or simply enough space to work out what they think.

    The challenge is that leadership requires us to pay attention without becoming overconfident about what we believe we have seen. Ignoring quiet signals means missing information that could help us understand people and organisations more effectively, while interpreting every signal too quickly risks creating explanations that are more about the leader’s assumptions than the reality of the situation.

    After many years in leadership, I increasingly think that experience is partly about learning to notice more while assuming less.

    What People Learn From Being Around You

    I have always tried to encourage people to bring problems to me. Staff have sometimes hesitated because they knew I had a lot on my plate, but my response has generally been that dealing with difficult issues is part of my job. I would rather know about something and decide how to handle it than discover later that someone deliberately protected me from information because they thought I was too busy.

    However, approachability is more complicated than simply telling people that the door is open. During my time working in Africa, I experienced a situation where people chose not to bring an important problem to me. The issue directly affected me and my family, yet those involved were reluctant to say anything because I was the senior leader and they did not want to worry me.

    My initial perspective was straightforward. There were two reasons they should have spoken to me. First, the issue needed to be raised with me as their leader, and second, it affected me personally as a member of the family involved. From my cultural perspective, withholding that information did not make sense.

    Their intentions, however, were good. They believed they were showing respect and consideration, and their understanding of hierarchy, responsibility and care was different from mine. The experience reminded me that leaders can work hard to make themselves approachable and still misunderstand why people choose not to approach them. What feels like avoidance or unnecessary deference to one person may feel like respect to another.

    That does not remove the need to address the issue. We had the conversation and I explained why I needed people to bring things to me, both professionally and personally. What mattered was recognising that changing the behaviour required understanding where it had come from rather than assuming people had acted irresponsibly.

    Approachability is also communicated through much smaller interactions. Giving someone your attention sounds simple, yet leaders regularly undermine it without intending to. A phone rings, an email appears, someone passes the window or another person arrives at the door with something that will apparently take only a minute.

    I have become more conscious of not looking at my phone when I am speaking with someone, although there are occasions when I need to explain that a particular call has to be answered. The more difficult situations are often when a senior colleague arrives while I am already meeting with someone and attempts to begin another conversation. The interruption is usually introduced as something quick, but allowing it sends a message to the person already in the room about whose time and concerns matter most.

    Image Article 016 02

    I have had to become clearer about protecting those conversations. If I am with someone, I am with them. Unless the matter is genuinely urgent, the person interrupting can speak to my PA, leave a message or trust that I will return to them. That boundary can occasionally feel uncomfortable, particularly when the person waiting is more senior, but repeatedly abandoning one person’s time because someone with greater status has arrived teaches everyone involved something about how the organisation really works.

    Leaders are always teaching people how to approach them, what will receive their attention and whose concerns are likely to take priority. Much of that teaching happens without any deliberate intention from the leader.

    I learned that lesson very quickly when I first moved into leadership. Within my first week, I was making mistakes, and fortunately someone was willing to tell me directly that I was getting something badly wrong and needed to change what I was doing. I still make mistakes and expect to continue making them because experience does not remove human error, poor judgement or the possibility of handling something badly.

    The difference is what happens next. Leaders can spend their energy defending the decision, explaining their intentions and protecting their credibility, or they can acknowledge the mistake and do something differently. One of the principles I have returned to repeatedly is simple: do not prove it, improve.

    People notice which option a leader chooses. They notice how you react when challenged, whether you thank people, how you behave after difficult meetings, whether you keep promises and how you treat people who can do nothing to advance your career. Leadership is visible in far more moments than leaders control, which means credibility is built less through managing impressions and more through behaving consistently when you have forgotten anyone is paying attention.

    Notice More, Assume Less

    One of the most useful sources of information in an organisation is the atmosphere around people, although it is also one of the easiest to misinterpret. The mood before a meeting begins, the way people respond when someone enters a room, unusual silence, changes in body language and the absence of conversations that would normally take place can all tell a leader that something may be happening.

    The important word is may.

    I would never walk into a room, notice an atmosphere and immediately address it as though I knew what everyone was thinking. I could be completely wrong, and announcing that people appear unhappy, disengaged or angry may create a problem that did not previously exist. Noticing an atmosphere gives me a reason to pay attention, not permission to diagnose it publicly.

    Image Article 016 03

    Sometimes I investigate afterwards by speaking with people and trying to understand whether anything needs attention. At other times, I leave it alone because people are allowed to be disappointed, frustrated or a bit miffed without leadership turning every emotional response into an issue requiring intervention.

    Where there is an obvious reason for the atmosphere, I may acknowledge the situation without telling people how they feel. Something has happened, it would be understandable if people were feeling angry, disappointed or unsettled, and if anyone wants to talk further, they know where I am. That creates an opportunity for conversation without requiring people to accept my interpretation of their emotions.

    The same caution matters when people come to leaders with problems. One of the easiest mistakes to make is to begin solving the problem before understanding what the person actually needs. A colleague starts describing a difficult situation and, because leaders are accustomed to making decisions and resolving issues, we begin offering advice before they have finished explaining what happened.

    Over time, I have become more willing to make the purpose of the conversation explicit. Knowledge of the person and their body language can provide clues, but rather than relying entirely on those clues, I might say that it sounds as though they want some advice, that they seem to need reassurance, or that I can see something is weighing heavily on them and they are welcome to speak freely. The important distinction is that I am offering an interpretation they can correct rather than deciding what they need on their behalf.

    Not every problem requires a solution from the leader. Sometimes people need to think aloud, test their own reasoning or simply speak without being interrupted. Becoming helpful too quickly can prevent leaders from becoming useful.

    The need to notice carefully also extends beyond the people who report directly to us. I once observed someone being spoken to by their line manager in a way that concerned me. I did not directly manage the person involved, and I did not know enough about the wider context to intervene immediately or assume that my interpretation was correct.

    Instead, I checked in privately and asked how the meeting had been for them. Their initial response gave me an indication that there might be more to discuss, so I explained what I thought I had observed, asked them to correct me if I was wrong and gave them the choice of whether they wanted to talk about it.

    They did.

    The situation had not been enjoyable, and what I had seen was not an isolated experience. What stayed with me was the importance of creating the opportunity for someone to speak without forcing my interpretation onto them. Leaders need to notice how people are being treated by other leaders, because psychological safety can be damaged through individual relationships even when the wider organisation repeatedly claims to value openness, trust and respect.

    When people watch a colleague being interrupted, dismissed, laughed at or made to feel foolish, they learn from the experience even if nothing was directed at them. They become more cautious about asking questions, offering ideas or admitting mistakes because they have seen what may happen to someone who takes that risk.

    Fear of embarrassment can silence people long before fear of failure does. Leaders who want challenge, honesty and new ideas therefore need to pay attention not only to whether people are speaking, but to what happens when they do.

    What Urgency Makes Invisible

    One of my biggest regrets from earlier periods of leadership is allowing operational matters to push strategic thinking aside. There was always something immediate that needed attention, and the nature of leadership means that many of those issues were legitimate. Problems had to be solved, people needed answers, decisions had to be made and the organisation had to continue functioning.

    The difficulty is that operational work provides immediate evidence of productivity. Something was wrong, you dealt with it and the problem disappeared. Strategic work rarely provides the same satisfaction because its impact is slower, less visible and easier to postpone. Developing people, strengthening systems, planning ahead and identifying problems before they grow can always be pushed into next week when something more urgent arrives today.

    I have had to work deliberately on this because being busy is not evidence that a leader is spending time on the things that matter most. An organisation can become extremely efficient at reacting to problems while making very little progress towards preventing them.

    Image Article 016 04

    That is one reason I have come to value the idea of relentless routines. Culture is not built through occasional speeches about expectations or values, but through the principles and behaviours leaders return to consistently enough that people know what will happen when something goes wrong.

    For me, one of those repeated principles has been do not prove it, improve. When a mistake happens, the most useful question is rarely how we can demonstrate that we were right all along. The better question is what needs to become better because of what we have learned.

    Repeated principles matter because culture develops through accumulation. Leaders reinforce expectations every time they follow through on a promise, challenge poor behaviour, recognise someone’s contribution, admit a mistake or respond consistently to a problem. They also shape culture through everything they repeatedly ignore.

    The same issue of visibility affects the people whose work prevents problems. Organisations naturally notice the person who resolves a crisis because the problem and the solution are visible. The people who anticipated the difficulty, corrected an error, challenged a decision or prevented the crisis from happening may receive far less attention because there is nothing dramatic to remember.

    I have been fortunate to work with PAs who have prevented me from making more mistakes than I probably realise. They have challenged communications, told me when something was wrong, corrected issues before they travelled further and provided a safeguard around my own leadership. Looking back, I am not sure I have always acknowledged that contribution as much as I could or should have.

    The same is true of administrative staff, cleaners, maintenance teams and many other people whose work is most successful when nobody notices it. Rooms are ready, buildings function, systems work and problems disappear before they reach senior leaders. Their contribution can become invisible because competence often looks like nothing happening.

    Experience has made me more conscious that recognition should not depend entirely on visibility. Some of the most valuable people in an organisation are not the ones repeatedly rescuing difficult situations, but those whose preparation, judgement and consistency mean fewer situations need rescuing in the first place.

    Reducing The Space For Uncertainty

    Earlier in my career, I spent far more time worrying about difficult conversations before they happened. I would imagine how someone might respond, rehearse arguments and consider the different ways the meeting could go wrong. Over time, preparation and experience have reduced much of that anxiety.

    I now spend more of my reflective energy after the conversation, considering what went well, what I could have handled differently, whether I understood the other person properly and what needs to happen next. Proper planning helps because uncertainty becomes more manageable when I know why the meeting is happening, what needs to be discussed and what outcome I am trying to achieve.

    Interestingly, I still experience the opposite side of this. When someone suddenly asks to meet me without explaining what the meeting is about, I can spend considerable time wondering why. The absence of information creates space for possibilities, and those possibilities are rarely reassuring.

    Image Article 016 05

    That experience has made me more aware of what leaders create when they summon people to meetings without context, delay conversations unnecessarily or allow uncertainty to continue when a small amount of information could reduce it. There may be legitimate reasons why everything cannot be shared, but that is different from giving people nothing.

    Uncertainty has a habit of growing in silence. People rehearse conversations that have not happened, interpret behaviour without enough information and imagine outcomes that may bear little resemblance to reality. Once a proper conversation begins, assumptions can be corrected, misunderstandings clarified and people can start working with facts rather than fears.

    The same principle applies to mistakes. Leaders sometimes create uncertainty because people do not know whether an error will be acknowledged, hidden, defended or blamed on someone else. The response teaches people whether honesty is safe and whether taking responsibility is genuinely expected throughout the organisation or only from those without positional authority.

    I learned within my first week of leadership that people were watching more closely than I realised, and I was fortunate that someone chose to tell me directly that I needed to change what I was doing. Years later, I still depend on people being willing to do that because leadership experience has not made me immune to poor decisions or mistakes.

    What experience has changed is my understanding of how much information exists in the quieter moments around leadership. The colleague who hesitates before approaching, the person whose attention is repeatedly interrupted, the atmosphere before a meeting, the employee who stops contributing after watching someone else being embarrassed, the strategic work that keeps being postponed, the PA who prevents a mistake nobody will ever know about, and the anxiety created by a meeting invitation with no explanation all tell us something about how an organisation feels to the people inside it.

    Not every signal requires intervention, and not every interpretation will be correct. Leaders can cause considerable damage by assuming that noticing something gives them complete understanding of it.

    The responsibility is to remain curious enough to notice, cautious enough to question our assumptions and consistent enough to act when the pattern becomes clear. Over time, leadership may become less about having better answers and more about becoming better at recognising what deserves another question.

    The quiet signals are always there. The challenge is learning which ones need our attention, which ones need more understanding and which ones simply need enough space for people to be human.

    If you enjoyed this article, you can continue exploring these ideas through the growing collection of short leadership videos published across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. Wherever you choose to follow, I hope the reflections encourage you to think a little differently about the quieter moments that shape leadership every day.