In my experience, one of the most common mistakes organisations make is assuming that the person who performs best in a role will automatically become an effective manager. It happens every day. A high-performing salesperson becomes Sales Manager. A brilliant engineer is promoted to lead a team. A top-performing specialist takes on management responsibilities because it feels like the natural next step. The problem is that technical expertise and leadership capability are not

When was the last time you really questioned what your managers actually need to develop? Most organisations default to the same checklist. Difficult conversations. Performance management. Time management. Presentation skills. All of those matter, but are that really what your managers need most right now? What about the ability to decipher strategy and vision and make it meaningful for the people around them? What about knowing how to make their people feel genuinely cared f

In my experience, one of the biggest challenges facing organisations today is not a lack of strategy, process or policy. It is management avoidance. Too often, managers hand people challenges over to HR before they have had the conversation themselves. Performance issues become “HR problems.” Difficult behaviours get escalated instead of addressed. Feedback is delayed because managers lack the confidence to handle uncomfortable conversations directly. Great managers understan

It was great to work with you during the first workshop of the programme. You lived up to expectations, and I'm already looking forward to seeing you all again in September. At the end of the page are all of the responses to the four questions that I set to help you integrate and transfer your learning. This page will be shared with the UK leadership team, who will use it for follow-up conversations. If you haven't sent me your answers to these questions yet, forward them to

Thanks for sharing your commitments. Here is a capture of them that we will revisit when we reconvene in the autumn. Have an awesome season. Commitments Chris: Leadership Commitment 1: Working on the business Block a half-hour slot in the diary at the beginning of each week to concentrate solely on strategic tasks (no operational tasks, emails or meetings) such as developing longer-term priorities and identifying longer-term risks. This will help give me clarity on my key pri

A coachee said that to me last week. I have been working with her for several months. Bright, considered, and forensically clear in her thinking. She had the ear of everyone who mattered and the respect of people at every level. I'd never once experienced her as quiet. But she'd been carrying that belief for twelve years. It started with a poorly delivered personality profile that told her she was an introvert. And somewhere along the way, introvert became quiet, quiet became

Most L&D teams are busy. Programmes are running, workshops are full, and feedback scores look strong. On the surface, it suggests a function that’s adding value. But step back and ask a harder question. How commercially aware is your L&D team? Not in how well they design learning, but in how well they understand the business they’re there to support. Do they know how the organisation makes money, where margins are tight, what’s driving performance, and where it’s falling shor

Here is my video introducing the top four leadership characteristics. I would facilitate the discovery and exploration of them in a much more interactive, practical and brain friendly way. This is purely to introduce the research and give a flavour of why I believe it would be useful for your people.

In Part 1 I shared the worst thing I've ever heard a CEO say to his team. The silence that followed told me everything about the culture he'd created. One where speaking up felt dangerous. Where mistakes were weapons. Where possibility had quietly left the building. Project Aristotle told us psychological safety is the single biggest differentiator in high performing teams. But knowing that and building it are two very different things. Here are three fundamental habits every

If you’re leading L&D, there’s a good chance your role has been shaped around delivery. Programmes to run, stakeholders to respond to, learning platforms to manage. It’s busy, visible, and often valued. But here’s the challenge. If your focus is delivery, you’re only influencing a small part of what actually drives performance in your organisation. Your real job isn’t to deliver learning. It’s to improve performance. Why Delivery Isn’t Enough You can run great programmes. You

"And rest assured, if anyone else fails to deliver, he won't be the only one whose position is at risk." I've been consulting for over 20 years. That was up there with the worst things I've heard a CEO say to their team. The room went silent. And in that silence, any remaining sense of possibility in that business disappeared. I didn't need a psychologist to tell me what had just happened. But as it turns out, Google did the research anyway. In 2012 Google embarked on one of

Starting on the 14th May, you're joining a cohort of Gozney managers taking part in a development series with a single goal: to build managers who are unmistakably Gozney, shaped by what this business stands for and where it's going. Event 1 - The Five Behaviours of Outstanding Managers We'll explore the five behaviours that separate outstanding managers from technically brilliant individual contributors. The session will help you deliberately shift where you spend your time

I really enjoyed our day working together last week, for somewhat unexpected reasons. While it's never great to have interruptions during learning events, having the team deal with live challenges while learning together can embed the learning more quickly and make it more meaningful. While there's a pause in the programme until after the season, the coming months are a perfect opportunity to test yourself and ensure that you're putting your learning into action during your b

L&D is always having an impact. The real question is whether it’s positive or negative. Every programme, every intervention, every conversation with a stakeholder is shaping behaviour in some way. It’s either moving the organisation forward or quietly reinforcing the status quo. There is no neutral. When the Impact Is Positive You can see it when L&D is working well. Conversations with stakeholders become sharper and more focused on performance. Leaders are clearer on what go

This question digs much deeper than "do your people like you?" More than "are they engaged." Instead, does it feel worthwhile to work in. Answering this question may be harder than you think. When morale dips, the remedy is predictable. Book a speaker. Launch a recognition scheme. Run an away day. Invite more ideas. Tick the boxes that "prove" you care. And morale may creep up a point or two on the next survey. But they aren't sustainable changes because low morale isn't the

I am really looking forward to working with you during your Inspiring Leadership programme. Here is a message from Jeremy and Karen about the programme. Here is a short video outlining what to expect from the programme and how to prepare to get the most from it. The following document outlines the logistics and what you need to do to prepare for the programme in more detail. Please get in touch if you need any clarification. I want to reiterate that I will do everything possi

At TwentyOne Leadership, we do everything that we can to make the events we create for clients as powerful as they are valuable. After over 20 years of leading events, we know certain things create the right environment for learning. The venue Sometimes clients spend a lot of money on grand venues that aren't conducive to a great experience. Sometimes the elements that make a venue great for learning aren't the obvious ones. Here are our requests for a brilliant learning env

L&D often talks about “difficult stakeholders.” Leaders who demand training, teams who want quick fixes, requests that arrive late, vague, and urgent. But the issue isn’t the stakeholders. It’s how we respond. Too often, we say yes. Yes to the workshop. Yes to the programme. Yes to a solution before we’ve properly understood the problem. And in doing so, we reinforce the very behaviour we complain about. If L&D continues to accept orders, the business will continue to place t

A client said that to me recently. Unprompted. They'd commissioned large-scale development for leaders from a well-known provider. Hundreds of people went through it quickly. Plenty of reaction data. Lots of ticks in lots of boxes. They knew, before it started, that it wouldn't really change anything. Nobody got challenged on using that particular provider because they are seen as the safe option. Nobody questioned the decision and as a result nothing really changed in the bu

Somewhere along the way, Learning & Development got boxed in. Ask most leaders what L&D does and you’ll hear familiar answers: runs courses, delivers workshops, manages the LMS. Useful, yes. Strategic, rarely. The function becomes a service provider, waiting for requests, responding to perceived needs, and measuring success through attendance and feedback scores. But none of that guarantees performance. Why Training Isn’t the Point If L&D is serious about impact, it has to st