Leadership

You promoted your best engineer to manage a team, and it isn’t going the way you hoped. Why it happens, and what helps.

The Culture Question Most Leaders Avoid When I ask CEOs and MDs about their company culture, I usually get the same kind of answer – “It’s great. We have a strong team. People get along.” But then I ask something different. “If I walked around your business when you weren’t there, what would I see?…

Every leader, at some point, has faced a rude or dismissive comment from a team member. Maybe it’s a snarky remark in a meeting, a dismissive tone in an email, or outright ignorance in a discussion. In those moments, it’s easy to feel disrespected, frustrated, or even angry. Your instinct might be to push back…

For many experienced leaders, the hardest part of managing a team isn’t setting the vision or sharing the strategy—it’s addressing the gaps in performance that quietly threaten to unravel it all. These aren’t the glamorous moments of leadership. They’re the moments when you notice someone on your team falling short. Maybe their standards have slipped,…

Do you feel overwhelmed by endless demands, unable to focus on the decisions and tasks that truly drive your business forward? For many CEOs and MDs, time is their most critical yet wasted resource. Endless to-do lists, constant “quick questions,” and reactive firefighting eat away at their ability to lead effectively. It can seem an…

Most leaders know teamwork is crucial to business success, but there’s a difference between knowing why it’s important and making it happen. Improving teamwork isn’t about clichés like “having an open-door policy” or “organising team-building exercises.” It’s about embedding systems, behaviours, and structures that fundamentally transform how your team works together—and it directly impacts your…

We’ve all felt it. A passive-aggressive comment in a meeting that cuts through the room, leaving frustration and discomfort in its wake. You can be left with thoughts like: “Why do they speak to me like that?”“Why can’t they say something useful?” Afterall, you’re just trying your best to move things forward, so what is…

Retraining Isn’t the Fix Your Managers Think It Is If your managers keep suggesting retraining when someone in their team underperforms, and it’s not solving the problem, you’re not alone. This is a common fallback. A team member misses the mark, and when asked why, they say, “I didn’t understand.” The manager’s response? Provide more…

Negativity in teams can be subtle. It’s not always an all-out cycle of complaints and moaning. Often, it’s quieter—team members raising concerns without offering solutions, avoiding accountability, or focusing on what’s wrong rather than what could be improved. It’s easy to dismiss this as “just how people are.” But more often than not, it’s not…

Picture this: your sales manager is pushing for a bigger marketing budget to hit their targets, but your operations manager insists he needs budget to streamline production and meet future demand. Meanwhile, your finance lead is holding back both requests, worried about cash flow. Managers often focus on what’s best from their perspective or for…