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.

A very strong theme that comes through from almost every senior leader I work with is the desire to spend more time on thinking creatively and strategically. Here’s a simple set of triage questions that can be surprisingly powerful in helping you prioritise in the moment.

Leadership decisions are rarely just about what to do next. Beneath every action sits a particular internal stance: the state of mind and body you bring into the moment. Two leaders might make the same decision, yet the outcomes differ because the quality of presence behind each decision is different

Leadership means knowing when to follow the plan and when to look up, reassess, and trust your own view of the road ahead.

Spinning your wheels on low-impact tasks can leave you exhausted.

Here’s some thoughts on how to identify the work that will get you moving…

How much of your week is spent on strategic thinking?

It can be hard to carve out the time and mental space, but it’s essential. Here’s 5 tips to help.

Let’s freshen it up. Here are three counterintuitive tips for dealing with overwhelm that may challenge your assumptions and help you approach the never-ending to-do list in a new way

Overwhelmed clients often ask me for tips and tricks to help them handle the demands on their time and energy.

Stop to think about it, though, and that’s bonkers. How is adding more going to help with overwhelm?

“In nearly all of the dozens of workplaces we’ve studied, helped, or worked at, we’ve found that meetings in particular create wasteful and soul-crushing friction”…

A new Harvard Business Review piece reports research finding what we all already know to be true – and importantly, offers some solutions.

When you feel like you can’t stop working, you’re in fight-or-flight mode. Here’s what to do…

Delegation is an important component of most leadership roles. The trouble is leaders often have a difficult time letting go of responsibilities. Here’s some tips on when and how to delegate.

Lately there has been a real theme among my clients: how to find time to get important work done in the face of the relentless onslaught of to-dos.

Here’s the hard reality…

Many of my clients come to me because they find themselves at a career crossroads. They can see the brightly lit road to (more) success at work ahead of them. They know what would be required to get there. And they find themselves, often to their surprise and bewilderment, unwilling to follow it. Here’s how I tackle that one…

It’s not easy in an era of constant noise: meetings, messages and notifications, but if you can do it, you'll be better off. Here’s 4 tips for making time for strategic thinking.

It makes sense to focus your attention on the most critical tasks at work and at home. Identifying what inputs have the most impact and prioritising those can save you spending fruitless time and energy on the rest. Here’s how…

You’ve no doubt seen the important/urgent matrix. But, how does your to-do list look?

Feeling angry and hard done by, while it may be perfectly justified, is a short-term tonic. You don’t have to like reality, but nothing changes in Should Town

Lots of people grappling with overload and/or a job they find increasingly unlikeable are looking for a magical cure that will solve all their problems. I know how that feels – I did it too.

It’s obvious that you will get the most from people when they are able to perform at a high level ... but are you actively undermining their capacity by creating and perpetuating an always-on, distraction-rich culture? Here’s 7 practical ways to make it better.