Executive coaching, grounded in behavioural science

The numbers were fine.
That was the problem.

Bad leadership is invisible while the number lands. Nobody asks whether the goals could have been higher, or whether the team could have performed even better, because nobody asks anything of a team that is hitting a nominal target. The target was arbitrary in the first place.

So the absence of leadership goes unrecognised, and the behaviour goes uncorrected. Assumptions are made and conclusions are drawn. Good numbers equals good leadership.

Most composure at the top is a performance

The rooms where careers are decided are not grading how good a leader you actually are. They are reading whether you are calm, diplomatic and on message. So that is what leaders learn to produce: a picture of composure, painted carefully over how they really feel.

I have watched leaders project confidence and authority for the length of a meeting, only to look exhausted and anxious the moment the room emptied. That bill compounds with age, and it is always paid somewhere. In their health. In their relationships. In their happiness.

There is another kind of composure. Built, not performed. You are not wasting energy trying to look in control, because you are in control.

Twenty-seven years, and I got a good deal of it wrong

I spent my career at Cisco and finished as Vice President for service sales across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). But in my first leadership role, I was emotional, controlling and often short-tempered. None of these qualities made me a good leader. Unfortunately for those who worked for me, the numbers told my management that everything was working as it should.

Later, as a senior leader, I became cynical. Cynicism at that level is not courage. It is a career quietly ending itself.

The evidence speaks for itself