You know this person. Everyone does. Highly skilled, well-liked, deeply valued. The organisation would be significantly poorer without them. And yet something isn't quite right. The executive roles they deserve are given to others. Their teams turn over more people than they should. And nobody quite understands why. Here's what I've observed over twenty years of working with exactly these people. They're not stuck because they lack talent. They're stuck because they've never

When leaders talk about culture, the discussion often centres on values, behaviours and engagement. New initiatives are launched. Posters appear on walls. Leadership teams spend months defining the culture they want people to experience. Yet despite all of this effort, many organisations continue to struggle with accountability, trust and performance. The reason is simple. Culture is not built through presentations or values statements. It is built through everyday conversati

Standing in the middle of an HR office, asking people what the company values were. Nobody could tell me. And they were hanging from the ceiling above their heads. That moment has stayed with me for twenty-five years. Not because the people were disengaged. But because the values had never been given a reason to matter. They existed on a banner, on a slide in the induction and in a line manager briefing. But that organisation is far from alone. Company values have become one

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

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

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

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

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

The Exec meeting looked fine from the outside. Experienced people around the table. A clear agenda. Confident conversations. But everyone knew that something was off. That's why I had been invited to observe. What I saw and heard were conversations that were slightly too polished. Disagreements quickly pushed back under the surface. Nobody was really pushing back on anything. What I was watching wasn't a high performing leadership team. It was more like a polite gathering, wh

The Illusion of Success For years, L&D has leaned on a familiar signal. End-of-session feedback. Strong scores. Positive comments. People saying they enjoyed it. It feels like success. But what’s actually changed? Because people can enjoy a session, rate it highly, and still go back to doing exactly what they were doing before. The same behaviours show up. The same challenges remain. The same performance gaps continue. Yet the programme gets ticked off as a job well done. Mea

Last year I sat down with the executive team of a highly technical production business. They were significantly behind target. Investors were applying serious pressure. The atmosphere was tense. We spent several hours working through what they thought their strategy was before someone finally said: "Actually, we do have a strategy document." They opened it. Twelve pages. I read it and understood exactly why they were in trouble. It wasn't a strategy. It was a peace treaty. Bu