If your team is afraid to outshine you, you are the problem. True leadership isn't about being the smartest person in the room; it's about building a room where talent can exceed yours. Learn why pruning high performers destroys innovation and how to stop being the toxic boss who fears their team’s success.

The "open door" policy sounds enlightened but has two failure modes: the people who are too intimidated to use it, and the people who overuse it. Neither group is prioritising your impact. Why structured access beats open access, and how replacing the open door metaphor with a designed system makes you more available for what matters, not less.

Here are a few ways to approach ways of working accountability without losing “niceness” as a leader.

Sometimes pushing back can be particularly challenging when a stakeholder is angry and/or powerful. It requires a delicate balance between maintaining the relationship and respecting your own limits. Here are 5 strategies that you can use to push back effectively in these difficult situations.

Recently I ran a workshop for in-house lawyers and was asked for tips on how to assert healthy boundaries and push back on work demands when your stakeholders refuse to hear it. Here’s my take…

From time to time I will have a meeting with a potential client about working with them or their team.

Want to know a big red flag?

When a client is feeling stuck or stressed about an upcoming conversation, these 3 questions have often proved to be a real game changer.

Lately I've been thinking about "being cruel to be kind". I'm against it. Why not just be kind? That might (will) mean making decisions other people don't like, but that's very different from treating people with contempt and indifference.