Big update from HQ, we’re opening up Custard today to another 50 teams, which feels so crazy/exciting that we’re already on the full second cohort. I can’t wait to meet some of you inside.

Eventually, Custard will be open full-time, like most tech products. But right now, I’m making a very intentional choice to grow it sustainably.

I’ve got an incredible audience ready and waiting to buy. I could open the floodgates today. But I’d rather build out our support, onboarding, and tech properly first, so that everyone who comes in gets an exceptional experience (not a rushed one).

But today I’m coming back around to my FAVOURITE topic… The 1:1

We cannot escape them as managers. Infact, they’re one of the single most important levers we can pull to improve our culture.

However, the traditional ‘appraisal’ system is wildly outdated and if we don’t switch it up we’ll get left behind. Instead, we need a system that runs seamlessly to understand your team, so you can continue to challenge and fulfil them at work.

Luckily for you, I have spent years testing and refining this system, experimenting with the questions, the frequencies and more, so it’s now literally plug and play ready for you to start using.

Today I’m laying out my 4 step 1:1 system, and I’ve linked out an agenda below so make sure you scroll to get those.

The mistakes

I train leaders inside some of the planet’s most successful organisations, and the mistakes I see over and over are:

• The 1:1 turning into a regular status update, or just a task check-in, without making the space to talk about deeper stuff

• The manager cancelling

• Assuming our team's priorities are the same as our own (eg. You want promotions & pay rises, but they prioritise creativity or rest).

• Only doing ‘appraisals’ annually (Bottling up feedback, praise and general performance improvement work until it’s all way too late).

• Just saying ‘my door is always open’ (This isn’t enough, our team naturally don’t want to ‘bother’ us).

The method

Each employee should have:

Every year - Salary Review

The annual review exists to make sure each employee is paid fairly and has a real space to talk through their wins and the reasoning behind them, so the leader has the full picture and the employee has the best possible chance of a fair outcome.

One tip: ask the employee to bring a short written case beforehand, covering their wins and impact, so the conversation starts from evidence.

But what if they ask for something I can’t give them? Transparency is your best friend here. Be honest. Set realistic expectations from the get go.

Every 90 Days - In-depth 1:1

A successful 90 day 1-2-1 is a space that is dedicated to, and properly used for 2 people to open and honestly discuss performance, personal development, and feedback. Both parties will prepare answers to each question

Here’s the agenda I use.

Every fortnight - 30 mins

No agenda needed here. Just some simple rules:

• 30 minute calendar entry, regularly occurring every 2 weeks

• You (the Leader) can NEVER cancel it. The team member may, but never you.

• No agenda needed, this is just space being held for you and your team member to bring anything important to you

Every day - Regular, unignored praise & difficult conversations

Challenge your team at the time, never bottle it up. Don't discourage emotion (It isn't weak. It shows that you care). And never, EVER ignore the difficult conversations.

What’s next?

It’s not actually helpful for you to consistently nurture each of your teams wishes & priorities, if someone prioritises spending time with their children, you shouldn’t be figuring out how they can do the school run, that’s on them.

But you need to build a workplace that creates a healthy and fulfilling environment for all, that works for your company and your values. Rather than having different rules for different people.

You need to KNOW these priorities, you need to ensure your team are consistently working on them, and you’re holding them accountable to pushing towards them.

So ultimately, you’re not pushing them in the wrong direction.

What do you struggle with most around 1:1s? Let’s chat in the comments

Leave a comment

Peace,

H x

Tomorrow I’m running a live, online session on how to hold authority and earn respect without becoming the manager nobody wants to work for.

So if you haven’t reserved your spot, do it now, because I’m talking about something today that makes this session more urgent.

Is AI coming for middle management?

I did a keynote last week on my biggest stage yet, 600 people in the audience, and I was asked the same nervous question (twice) that keeps popping up a lot recently…

“Heather, is AI going to replace us managers?”

But we’re asking the wrong question.

The real question is: “Which parts of my job is AI coming for, and am I still attaching my worth to those parts?”

I’ve watched leadership evolve now for over a decade, and I can tell you exactly which managers should be panicking right now, and which ones are about to become more valuable than ever.

So let’s get into it.

A brutal stat for you: Managers spend around 54% of their time on admin, i.e.: status updates, chasing information, reformatting the same update for five different stakeholders, running meetings that exist to relay information that could’ve been a Slack message. Eek. (I can relate).

But we can’t actually call that management… It’s information plumbing.

And information plumbing is exactly what AI is built to do, only faster, cheaper, and without a lunch break.

So if your entire value and self-worth as a manager has been built on:

• Passing updates up and down the chain

• Running status meetings

• Chasing people for information

• Being the human middleware between SLT and the team

All of those things can be replaced.

And I’m not saying this to scare you (I promise, nothing pi**es me off more than fearmongering around AI), but I do need to lay it out clearly, because I think you already know, deep down, that this isn’t the right way to be a leader, and something needs to change.

Here’s what AI cannot touch (not even close)

I can no longer count how many times I’ve told you this stat, but it’s so important in the AI discussion…

Gallup has proved one thing over and over: managers account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement.

Not the company, not the mission statement on the wall, not the free snacks… The manager.

And that engagement isn’t information pushing. It’s real, human, trust.

Put very plainly, AI cannot:

• Notice that someone’s gone quiet in meetings and ask them if they’re okay

• Build the kind of psychological safety where someone tells you the truth before it becomes a crisis

• Hold a difficult conversation with someone whose confidence is hanging by a thread

• Make a judgement call about when to push someone and when to protect them

• Earn respect

As I showed you in last week’s newsletter… Employees now trust their direct manager more than senior leadership (by a wide margin).

That trust isn’t sitting in a database somewhere AI can access. It’s built in hundreds of small human moments, things like a 1:1, hard feedback delivered kindly, and showing up consistently when things are messy.

“So how do I make sure i’m ahead of the curve with this?” I hear you ask

Forget waiting for your company to “strategise” about AI. If you do want to be ahead of the curve here, we can’t wait for permission to become more valuable.

Here’s where my team and I are starting:

1. Every week, find one dead task and kill it.
Pick the single most repetitive thing you do. Maybe it’s the status update, the meeting recap, or the report nobody actually reads properly. Draft it with AI instead of starting from scratch.
For example, a couple of months back, Levi used Claude Cowork to pull our weekly reporting data into Slack every Monday morning, so she no longer needs to spend an hour filling in reports.

2. Spend the hour you just got back on a person, not a task.
Have the 1:1 you’ve been putting off. Check in properly with the person who’s gone quiet lately. That hour is where your real value lives now, so don’t let more admin sneak back in and eat it.

3. Get visible outside your own team.
Post one honest thing on LinkedIn this week. Being visible, telling your stories and spotlighting your team not only fast-tracks your career, but makes you far more AI-proof because you’re building something human.

4. Practise the conversation AI can’t have.
Give that one piece of hard feedback you’ve been avoiding. Do it kindly, but do it properly. That’s the muscle that makes you genuinely hard to replace, and like any muscle, it only grows if you actually use it.

The line in the sand

If you’re an information pusher, you should be worried. That part of the job will be automated over the next 5 years, and no amount of “but I’ve always done it this way” will stop it.

But if you’re the person your team trusts with the truth, the one who has the hard conversation instead of avoiding it, the one who makes people feel safe enough to do their best work… You are about to become one of the most valuable people in your organisation.

The tools are changing but the job that actually matters isn’t.

So the question isn’t “will AI replace me?”

It’s now, “which manager am I choosing to be?”

Peace,

H

P.S. This is the entire thesis behind Custard btw. It isn’t there to replace the manager’s judgement… It’s there to systemise the admin, surface the pattern in the team’s feedback before it becomes a resignation letter, and hand the manager back their time so they can do the bit only a human can do.

We’re opening up to 50 more businesses next week, I hope you’re one of them. Join the waitlist.

The sun is shining woop, and next week I’m bringing our community together for a live workshop that could completely change how you lead for the rest of 2026.

I’ll be teaching my powerful 4-part system to reset your authority, earn more respect and step into the leader you know you can be: reserve your free spot here.

But something has caught my urgent attention…

PwC’s latest ‘Workforce Hopes & Fears Survey’ confirms something I’ve seen play out for over a decade so we really need to chat about it.

I have seen that, for years, middle managers (anyone who sits in between SLT and non-people managers) have been quietly carrying organisations on their backs.

And now the data has finally caught up:

Yep, you read it correctly. Employees trust their direct manager far more than they trust senior leadership.

They feel safer speaking openly with them.
They believe them more.
They go to them first when things feel uncertain, confusing or unfair.

Which tells us something most businesses still don’t want to fully face:

Culture does not live in the C-suite.
It cannot be dictated from the top.
It lives in the day-to-day relationship between a middle manager and their team.

Middle managers are our translators.
They turn direction from the top into clear outcomes and priorities.
They keep teams focused when pressure spikes.
They translate strategy into day-to-day decisions.

And yet…

They are still the most undertrained and overstretched layer of the organisation.

We are asking them to carry the emotional weight of the business without giving them the skills, systems, or support to do it well.

If you are a middle manager, do you feel genuinely equipped to carry that responsibility?

Do you know how to set clear expectations, handle difficult conversations and hold people accountable without losing trust?

And if you lead middle managers, are you giving them the skills, systems and support they need to succeed?

Because whether you are carrying that pressure yourself or supporting someone who is, middle management cannot keep being treated as the forgotten layer of the business.

It is where culture is translated, trust is built and performance is won or lost.

Peace,

H

P.S. This is exactly why Custard exists. Investing in our middle managers is officially absolutely crucial.

Custard is my new culture intelligence platform, built specifically for people operating in this middle space, where pressure comes from every direction.

It’s practical, grounded tech that helps managers to:

– Collect honest, anonymous team feedback
– Spot culture issues before they escalate
– Turn insights into clear, practical actions
– Get AI-powered coaching to lead better

Our next 50 free trial spots open on the 28th July, and the waitlist is filling up verrry quickly.

Happy halfway-there!

If you’re anything like me, this point in the year feels a bit... foggy. Not the fresh-start energy of January or the sprint-to-the-finish of Q4. Just... The middle.

And at this point in the year, the managers who end up feeling calm, respected, and in control heading into H3 are using the mid-year point to reset the fundamentals.

They’re revisiting their standards, treating July like a second start line (not just the middle of a long slog).

And they’re making sure the second half of 2026 feels intentional (not just a continuation of whatever habits crept in over the last six months).

So if you’re heading into H2 wanting to stop carrying everyone else’s problems, lead with more authority, and actually find some joy in managing again…

I’m running a free live workshop, back by demand: How to be a respected leader in 2026 (The mid-year reset version)

It’s the same framework I’ve used with thousands of managers to help them regain control of their time, decision-making, and standards.

👉 Save your spot

I’m only running this session once and attendance is capped. So join me live on 22nd July 3pm BST / 10am EDT, save your spot here

This won’t be boring leadership theory. It’ll be fun, whilst still being verrry practical (as always). A strong way to reset together as a leadership community before things ramp up again in autumn.

If you want the rest of 2026 to feel calmer, cleaner, and more intentional than the first half did, join us. Let’s reset 🚀

Peace,
Heather

Before I get into today’s topic, I want to say thank you.

This time last week, we opened Custard up to our waitlist. 50 spots. Gone in just over an hour.

We’ve been building Custard behind the scenes for 6 months, and last week was the first time it went out into the real world. Hundreds of team members are now inside it, and today, their managers got their very first culture scores. Eek.

Thank you to everyone who jumped in and trusted us with it early. It means more than you know.

And because of how fast those spots went, we’re planning to open a second round in a few weeks, so if you missed it, read more here.

Right, onto today’s topic...

There’s a moment from my early management days that still HAUNTS me. I was an Assistant Manager at Harrods, managing people who were older than me, more experienced than me, and seemed farrr more confident than I felt.

One team member kept turning up late. But not dramatically late, I told myself, nothing that felt “serious enough” to warrant a conversation. Ten minutes here. Five minutes there. The kind of thing you tell yourself you’ll pull them up on “next time”.

So I didn’t say anything, I told myself I was being empathetic and I didn’t want to be nit-picky.

But then very quickly, lateness became the norm. What I ignored didn’t disappear, and the rest of the team started to take note. Then slowly, it lowered the bar for everyone else (why wouldn’t they now turn up late too??), and not to mention damaged my authority with the team.

By the time I finally addressed it, that conversation ended up being ten times harder than it ever needed to be because I’d left it so long.

Over the years, I’ve had some brutally difficult conversations.

• I’ve fired people.

• Explained that someone isn’t ready for the promotion they expected.

• Telling a long-tenured employee that the role has outgrown them.

But as I became more senior, eventually working as an Ops Director, I realised that the conversations that feel the hardest in the moment aren’t the ones that cause the biggest damage. The big damage comes from the conversations you avoid.

That’s why the most important rule I’ve learned in leadership is this:

Never ignore it.

I didn’t build this framework in one go. It started as a few scribbled notes before conversations I didn’t want to have. Then I refined it, stress-tested it, and stripped it back to what actually worked when emotions were high and stakes were real.

I’ve now used this framework hundreds of times. I still use it today. And I’ve yet to find a difficult conversation it doesn’t help with.

I call it the 4P’s Framework.

Please steal it. Screenshot it. Print it. Write it down. Take it into the room with you if you need to.

Because the more of us who stop avoiding these conversations, the healthier our teams, our standards, and our working lives become.

The 4P’s framework for having difficult conversations

1: PURPOSE

Firstly, explain why are you having this conversation? What’s the outcome you actually want

“I want you to have more ownership, and I need to be able to trust the updates I’m getting.”

This stops the conversation becoming a rant and it anchors it in intent.

2: PROBLEM

What specifically needs addressing? Keep it factual and contained.

“I’ve had to chase progress several times after we agreed deadlines.”

Not “you’re unreliable”. Not “you don’t care”. Just the issue.

3: PROOF

What evidence makes this objective, not personal?

“On Tuesday I was asked for an update I didn’t have, and we then missed Thursday’s deadline.”

This is where defensiveness softens, because you’re not attacking character, you’re naming impact.

4: PATH

This is the part many managers skip, but it’s the part that actually creates change.

What happens next? What’s the expectation, and what changes?

“From now on, I need a weekly update with what’s done, what’s next, and any blockers. That’s how I stay hands-off without losing visibility.”

Final thoughts

Don’t be hard on yourself for struggling with this.

I know after training thousands of managers now, that the managers who earn the most respect STILL don’t find this easy. It’s not supposed to be easy, they still feel the same nerves, the same hesitation, the same discomfort.

The difference is they don’t let that stop them.

See you next week,

H

Most managers sit in one of two camps.

We either:

• Avoid the hard conversation entirely, softening the message so much that the person walks away with no idea anything was wrong.

• OR we overcorrect, come in too strong, and the conversation lands as an attack rather than a redirect.

Neither works.

What we need are phrases that do both things at once. That hold the standard without making someone feel small, are clear without being cruel, and move things forward instead of just making a point.

So here are the four phrases I come back to again and again:

1. “Help me understand your thinking here.”

I use this one constantly, especially when something lands on my desk that doesn’t make sense and my first instinct is to jump straight to “that’s wrong.”

It slows me down and it keeps the conversation open. Instead of leading with a challenge I lead with curiosity, and more often than not the person either explains something I’d genuinely missed, or they talk themselves to the realisation without me having to say it.

Example: if someone has gone completely off-brief on a piece of work, this is my opener. Not “this isn’t what I asked for” but “help me understand your thinking here.” Same message, but with a completely different energy in the room.

2. “If this keeps happening, here’s what I’d need to do. But I’d rather not get there.”

This is the one I had to learn to say out loud because for a long time it felt too direct.

But I've learned that naming a consequence clearly is one of the kindest things you can do for someone. It removes all ambiguity about where things stand. I use it when I've had the same conversation more than once and I need the person to understand that we're at a different stage now.

Example: if someone has missed a deadline for the third time and I've already addressed it twice, this is how I open the next conversation. I'm not threatening them. I'm being honest about where we are and making it clear I'd rather find a way through together.

3. “Here’s what I need from you going forward.”

I reach for this one when I want to close a difficult conversation cleanly without leaving it messy or open-ended. It's forward-facing, which really matters because the goal of any hard conversation isn't to make a point… It's to change something.

Example: if someone has been letting things slip and we've just had a frank conversation about it, I don't end with "so just try to do better." I end with "here's what I need from you going forward" and I get specific. E.g. The report in by Thursday. The update sent before you leave on Friday. Something concrete they can actually act on.

4. “The impact on the team was X. I don’t think that was your intention, but it’s worth knowing.”

This is probably the phrase I'm most glad I learned. I used to make the mistake of focusing on what someone did without separating it from why they did it, and the conversation would shut down almost immediately because they felt accused.

Now I lead with the impact and I actively separate it from the intent.

Example: if someone has been venting about a decision to the rest of the team before I've had a chance to address it properly, I don't go in assuming they were being deliberately difficult. I say "the impact on the team was that people started to feel unsettled before we'd had a chance to talk it through. I don't think that was your intention, but we need to discuss the impact."

The conversation stays open. And they can take responsibility for the impact without feeling like they're being painted as the villain.

Final Thoughts

Today is an increidbly exiting day for us here Fresh Leadership World HQ because it is the day we finally open up the doors to our brand new tech product, Custard, to the world.

6 months In The Making. Ans I’m so excited to see some of you inside.

So if phrases like these, along with 1:1 agendas, manager actions, team scores and a full library of resources to help you lead better week on week, sound like something you need, this is your last chance.

We open Custard to 50 businesses later today.

This is your last chance to join the waitlist to get all the info in a few hours time.

I can’t wait to see you inside,

H

I was a manager of a team at the age of 21. By 26 I was an Ops Director in one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Fast forward to this week, I’m 1 week away from launching an entirely new business. A tech product. And we have nearly 2 thousand people on the waitlist eek.

So I feel like if anyone is qualified to talk about imposter syndrome, it’s moi.

At the beginning, I had hugeee imposter syndrome. I struggled with:

• My team were older than me, why should they listen to me?

• I was new to manager world, I figured everyone else had so much experience, so why would they listen to me?

• If I made a decision that people didn’t ‘like’, I worried everyone was talking about me behind my back

But 21 year old me riddled with imposter syndrome Hev, could never have reached 28 year old, courageous, intentional leader Hev without getting some serious methods in place to NEVER let imposter syndrome get in the way of my growth.

The thing that really did it for me, the breakthrough moment, was realising…

There were people much less qualified than me, living my dream life, all because they decided to believe in themselves and take action

5 ways I never let imposter syndrome hold me back

If you want growth, the goal here isn’t to overcome imposter syndrome. If you ever feel you’ve ‘overcome’ your imposter syndrome, you’re actually just inside your comfort zone and you’ve stopped growing.

So the goal here isn’t to overcome imposter syndrome, but to use it to your benefit.

And BTW before I jump in, I did a full podcast episode on this where I go into imposter syndrome in much more detail. The mindset shifts, the practical tools, and the exact things that helped me stop letting it hold me back.

So if you’d rather listen properly on your commute, walk, or while pretending to answer emails, you can listen in. Here are the links: Spotify. Apple Music. YouTube.

Let’s go…

1. The things you feel most vulnerable about are actually your greatest strengths
   
   For me, alot of this was age and experience.
   I was worried everyone older than me was better, and I didn’t deserve a seat at the table as a result.
   But in reality, my age and lack of experience were great strengths.
   I wasn’t held back by ‘old ways’ or ‘pre-conceptions’ of how my role should look.

2. Focus on growth over perfection
   
   Don’t focus on being right, just focus on getting better
   That way, when you f*k up, it doesn’t matter
   When you seek growth, you’re not bothered about being perfect
   You instead figure out what learning needs to happen and lean into it
   Ultimately, you’ll become way less scared of failure, and stop letting that fear hold you back from all the growth you deserve
   

3. Know it’s going to be scariest at the beginning
   
   The first time you have a difficult conversation will be hard
   The 10th time will feel like second nature
   
   The first time you ask for a pay rise, you’ll be shaking and nervous
   The 10th time, you’ll go in there like a confident machine and ask for the exact number you deserve
   
   But you can’t get to the brilliant 10th time without doing the bad 1st
   So you need to just feel the fear and get the first 1st one over with
   Push through the barrier
   Shatter the ceiling
   

4. We’re not put on this earth to be liked by everyone
   
   Being a manager means making tricky decisions that might piss people off
   So guess what most people do? They try win the approval of as many as possible, and just never make a decision. They never grow and move forward.
   
   So remind yourself, we absolutely cannot excel in our work and life if we’re afraid of being disliked
   So long as you’re being kind, acting in the best interest of your business and team… It doesn’t matter if you don’t win the instant approval
   Because you will win the long term respect
   

5. Your final reminder:

Who’s with me?

Repeat after me.. I am never EVER going to miss out on an opportunity in my life because the voice in my head is telling me I’m not ready for it

I know it’s scary, trust me I’ve been there

But nobody is going to be a bigger cheerleader for your life and career than you, so you need to start smashing through these comfort zone barriers today

I believe in you

Peace,

H

P.S. We’re launching Custard 1 week today 👀

A few months ago I shared this list and honestly, the response blew me away. It became one of the most shared newsletters I’ve written. Since then, thousands of new managers have joined us here, so I thought it was time to bring it back.

So as a way of quick re-introduction… Hey, btw, I’m Heather, and I’ve spent the last 10 years managing teams, from the Harrods shop floor to Ops Director in corporate tech. I’m no leadership guru and will never claim to be. But I’m addicted to learning, and I know you are too, so I created this space to share my messy, real lessons of leadership in depth.

My hope is that these weekly emails bring clarity, growth and even joy to your work, and offer a quiet, precious realisation: ah, it’s not just me who feels this way.

If you’re here, you’re exactly where you should be. Because no matter what stage in your leadership journey, we’re all still In The Making.

I won’t do this big intro every time I’m just really glad you’re here. The more of us learning together, building a world where people can love the work they do, the better. And if you’ve been here a while, know I’m endlessly grateful.

Now, back to the point…

24 harsh truths all managers need to face

Over the last few years, I’ve worked with leadership teams across global corporates, scale-ups and founder-led businesses, delivering talks and workshops to managers under real pressure to perform. And across thousands of conversations, workshops and leadership rooms, the same patterns show up again and again.

Different industries. Different titles… But the exact same struggles.

The 24 truths I’m about to share aren’t here to flatter you. They might sting a little because they ask us to let go of comforting stories about ourselves. But these are the truths that sit underneath confident, respected leadership. So if you’re willing to read with openness rather than armour, we’re cooking.

I want you to actively engage with this, so if you strongly agree or disagree with any of the points, please comment below which number (or hit ‘reply’ to this email and let’s chat).

24 harsh truths all managers need to face, let’s go…

1. Giving tough feedback is hard. But managing the same underperformance for months is harder. Choose your hard.

2. People pleasing is costing you respect.

3. If your team won’t make decisions without you, it’s becuase you’ve trained them not to.

4. You cannot scale effort. You can only scale systems.

5. The greatest leaders ask more questions than they answer.

6. Leadership isn’t about being in the spotlight, it’s about shining the spotlight on others.

7. Conflict avoided always returns, usually louder.

8. Your intentions don’t matter, only your impact does.

9. If each individual’s success measures aren’t clear, accountability can’t exist.

10. Nothing will lose you great employees faster than them watching you tolerate a bad one.

11. If everything still relies on you, you’re not leading, you’re just depended on (and it feels good to feel needed).

12. If you wait to feel confident before you act, you’ll wait forever. Leadership requires courage first.

13. Delegation only works if you delegate the ‘why’, not just the ‘how’.

14. Being busy is not evidence of value.

15. If you’re constantly firefighting, you’ve trained yourself to be the rescuer. Stop fixing and start coaching.

16. Avoiding discomfort always costs more later.

17. Most performance issues are clarity issues in disguise.

18. If feedback has been bottled up until an appraisal and lands as a surprise, it’s a leadership failure.

19. Respect is built through consistency.

20. If you protect people from consequences, you steal their growth.

21. Leadership isn’t being needed, it’s about becoming unnecessary.

22. If you’re exhausted, look at what you refuse to let go of (cough, meetings, cough).

23. Being clear will upset some people. That’s the job.

24. If the team can function without you, that’s not failure, that’s leadership.

Which number do you agree with most? Or disagree?

Let’s chat…

Leave a comment

Peace,

H x

P.S. If you’re ready to take this work beyond the newsletter, here are 3 ways we can do that:

1. Build a better culture with Custard
Our new AI-powered culture platform helping managers understand what’s really going on in their teams, spot issues early and get personalised leadership support. Join the waitlist here.

2. Become a better manager with Fresh Start 🚀
My 6-week leadership bootcamp for managers who want to build confidence, create accountability and lead a high-performing team (without becoming the bottleneck). We run 2 cohorts per year, next one in September. Join the next waitlist here.

3. Bring me into your business 🎤
If you’re looking to develop your managers or create a stronger leadership culture across your organisation, I deliver keynotes, workshops and leadership programmes for teams around the world. Find out more here.

I genuinely can’t believe I’m finally writing this…

But my brand new podcast, the boardroom, is now LIVE 🚀🎤

So many of us are quietly having the exact same thoughts about work… and nobody’s saying them out loud. The pressure. The weirdness of leadership. Feeling out of your depth. Wanting to do well but also wanting to disappear at the same time.

And as much as I love social media (lol), there’s only so much I can discuss in a 60-second clip. So this podcast is an opportunity for me to have the raw, unfiltered, unedited conversations with you all that the algorithms don’t like.

So finally, we’ve got 2 full juicy episodes ready and waiting for you…

Episodes 1 & 2 are now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & YouTube 🤍

It’s probably the most “me” thing I’ve made in a long time.

New episodes every Wednesday at 8 am, timed perfectly for your commute ☕️

Whether you’re a first-time manager finding your feet, a senior leader carrying the weight of responsibility, or somewhere in between…

This is your seat at the boardroom table.

And I can’t wait for you to hear it 🥹

Thank you for being here through every chapter.

The mission has always stayed exactly the same: to build a world where everyone loves the work they do.

See you in The Boardroom.

H x

The BIG update this week is… we’ve officially set a launch date for Custard 🎉 And it’s coming sooner than you think.

After months of building, testing, breaking things, and rebuilding things (classic startup life), we’re so close to opening the doors. But for our first launch, we’re only opening the doors to 50 businesses at our exclusive launch day pricing, so we can work closely with everyone.

More details coming very soon. Make sure you’re on the waitlist so you don’t miss out.

ALSO, I have a very fun announcement coming for you on Thursday, something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, but keep putting off, so keep an eye out 🎙🎙

But, back to the matter at hand…

Most managers fail this 10-point test

I’ve spent the last 10 years in leadership roles, and the last 3 of those years, training managers across SMEs, huge corporates and beyond, and I’ll tell you something SO interesting…

Most managers can confidently tell me:

• Their revenue target,

• Their client deadlines,

• When their boss is next on annual leave.

But ask them:

• “How healthy is your team?”

• “Who is quietly disengaging?”

• “Who hasn’t had meaningful feedback in three months?”

And silence.

And what makes that so frustrating is that second list… That IS the job. Get that right, and the first list pretty much takes care of itself. Miss it, and you'll be chasing targets, plugging gaps, and wondering why nothing quite sticks.

This second list, the great leadership list, is a checklist. And most managers are running their teams without one. So let me give you mine.

The 10-point test

Ten points are available. Be very honest with yourself.

1. Every person on my team can explain exactly how their performance is measured

Clear roles & expectations. Clear success measures that they reguarly report on. Not “they know, roughly”, but actually, explicitly clear.

2. I have a consistent 1:1 rhythm

Every person has protected time in the diary and when you’re in it, you’re covering development, blockers, feedback, and workload. Not just project updates.

3. I know what each of the individuals in my team are struggling with the most

The biggest mistake managers make is assuming no news is good news.

Your team often won’t tell you they’re overwhelmed, they won’t tell you they’re losing motivation, or that they don’t trust a decision that was made. They’ll just quietly disengage. And by the time it surfaces, it’s already a problem.

So even though we can’t ‘fix’ every struggle and fear, we can know, ask and listen.

4. I give feedback before frustration builds

Great managers don’t wait for annual reviews. Feedback is a regular, low-stakes conversation, not a formal event that everyone dreads. The longer you leave it, the more loaded it becomes.

5. My team knows the collective priorities and vision of the team

Right now, today could every person on your team name the three most important things you’re collectively focused on? If not, they’re probably all working hard. Just in slightly different directions.

6. I have accountability without chasing

If you’re constantly reminding people, you’re the bottleneck. If everything relies on you remembering, the system is broken.

Signs it’s not working: you’re chasing the same things every week, nothing moves without you, and you’ve quietly stopped delegating because it feels easier to just do it yourself.

Accountability should be a shared expectation, not a chase you run every Monday morning.

7. My meetings feel purposeful

Every recurring meeting should have an objective, an owner, and a clear outcome.

“Catch-up” is not an objective. “To align” is not an outcome. If you can’t articulate what’s different after the meeting than before it, reconsider whether it needs to exist.

8. People feel safe disagreeing with me

Your culture isn’t measured by what people say when you’re in the room. It’s measured by what they say when you leave. If disagreement is rare, it’s not because everything’s going brilliantly, it’s more likely that people have learned it’s not worth it.

9. I’m building a team that can operate without me

One of the biggest traps managers fall into is becoming the person who holds everything together.

If every decision comes through you, every question comes to you and every problem needs your input.. It might feel like ‘good’ leadership, it makes us feel needed.

But eventually we have to realise we haven’t built a high-performing team… we’ve accidentally built a team with a single point of failure: you.

The big goal always need to be: To build a team that succeeds, without me, because of the systems I created.

10. You regularly check if your leadership is working

Regular pulse checks. Asking. Listening. Adjusting.

The best managers treat their leadership the same way great companies treat a product: always in iteration, never assuming it’s finished.

How many did you answer ‘yes’ to?

Let me know in the comments…

Leave a comment

But, what do I do about it?

If you went through this checklist and ticked less than 7… good. That means you’re ego isn’t too high and you found the areas where you can improve. You’re in the making of a pretty great leader.

Most of us managers get promoted because we’re brilliant at our job. Then, overnight, we’re expected to understand motivation, performance, difficult conversations, delegation, culture, and everything else that comes with managing humans.

Usually with no instruction manual.

So go back through your answers and find what you believe to be your biggest gap.

Don’t try and fix everything at once. Pick the area that would make the biggest difference to your team, and start there.

You got this.

Final thoughts

Most departments have dashboards for sales, marketing, finance, and operations. There are metrics, reviews, targets, and tracking for almost every function in a business.

But the thing responsible for all of those results, the people, is usually managed on gut feeling. And gut feeling doesn’t scale.

The managers who get this right aren’t necessarily more talented. They just have a system. But there’s no early warning system for disengagement, no prompt to check in before the wheels come off.

That’s exactly what Custard is built to fix.

Custard gives managers the exact system for managing their team that they were never given, surfacing what your team aren’t telling you, before it becomes a problem.

Make sure you’re on the waitlist for all the juicy details.

H x

I mentioned last week that I was about to be flown to the other side of the world for my furthest-ever speaking gig. Well… That happened. So here are my postcards from an incredible keynote conference slot in the Cayman Islands, featuring the clearest waters I’ve ever seen:

This is my signature keynote, one I’ve delivered on stages in front of thousands, and it’s titled… Stop Being Nice, Start Being Kind.

It’s a talk that, without doubt, every single time I deliver it, I get lines of people walking up to me afterwards telling them how much it resonated.

So today, I’m giving you the key message from that talk, because it’s one we all need to hear as often as possible.

Stop being nice

This is a message that has shaped my entire career, changed the relationships I have with people around me, and enabled me to build a high level of love and respect for myself in my leadership role:

Let’s break it down…

The definition of nice:

nice /nīs/ adjective
1. pleasant; agreeable; satisfactory.

Being nice is about giving others satisfaction to make them feel good.

It’s about winning approval. Having people agree. Being a version of yourself that doesn’t upset others. Doesn’t rock the boat.

In the world of leadership, being nice usually shows up in the form of:

1. Giving feedback, but in a light-hearted way as not to hurt people’s feelings too much (‘The sh*t sandwich’)

2. Having an important but opposing opinion, but you don’t want to upset people or step on anyone’s toes, so you keep quiet.

3. Saying yes to requests for help from your team instantly. You drop everything you’re doing and help.

We do these things because subconsciously (and often completely consciously too) we just want our team to like us. We want their approval. We want their respect.

And we might get it instantaneously. For the hours or days following your team member might think ‘great I really like this manager’.

But then what happens is:

1. Your team member carries on the behaviour you gave them feedback about.
   They haven’t changed because they didn’t hear or understand properly what you were telling them. This causes relationship breakdowns and tension.

2. Execute on their opinion, except it isn’t a good path to go down and they end up looking silly anyway. Even more so actually. You get frustrated thinking ‘I knew that wouldn’t work’.

3. You say yes to requests for help, dropping the important system work you needed to do more importantly. You’re just distracted by your team asking you questions. The team starts to feel more like it’s stuck together with sticky tape everyday as the back end systems fall apart. You also become a bottleneck, because now everyone needs to come to you to help them work.

You see what I’m getting at?

When we don’t show courage, discipline, directness and truth, we are only diminishing respect in the long run. Not earning it.

When you stand for nothing, you fall for anything.
- Alexander Hamilton

Start being kind

Being kind is fundamentally different to being nice.

Being kind is to give. It is to be ok with instant discomfort, knowing there is a more powerful, caring outcome in the long run.

kind / adjective
1. generous; helpful; caring about other people.

In the situations above, being kind is to:

1. Give feedback directly. In the moment. Absolutely no sugar coating.
   It needs to be properly heard and understood by the other person, even if it hurts their feelings in the moment.

2. When your gut tells you something is wrong and you have an opposing opinion, bring it to the table. Challenge people’s thought process when your gut tells you to, so as a team you can collectively make the best decision.

3. Don’t jump to save or rescue your team. Turn notifications off. Never rush to respond and become a bottleneck. Allow them space to find answers to the problem themselves.

The biggest lesson from this entire keynote is this

Great leaders and teams are not built by avoiding the truth. They’re built by creating a culture where people feel safe enough to share it.

That’s exactly why we built Custard.

To help managers create more candid cultures by giving teams a simple way to share honest feedback every week, and giving managers the insights, actions and tools to actually do something with it.

Because the best leaders don’t guess how their team feels. They ask.

🍮 Join the Custard waitlist here

Stop being nice, start being kind

Today’s action:

Ask yourself… Who is the 1 person in your team that you’re feeling a little angsty with at the moment?
Now write down:

• What feelings are you having? Anger? Frustration? Fear? Upset?

• What are the actions you’ve seen from them that are causing this? (This can

  sometimes feel hard to explain, if you’re struggling, don’t let that hold you back. Feelings are valid on their own too)

• What do you want to happen if they continue? Will they need to go on performance management? Disciplinary? Lose their job? (Email me if you need help with this bit)

Now sit them down and tell them all the above.

I hope this impacts your life as much as it has mine

Peace & love,

H

I’m headed to Heathrow this afternoon to fly to my my furthest keynote yet, to speak in front of my biggest ever audience. Eek. When I handed in my notice as an Ops Director in 2023, I had a vision for what I wanted to build with Fresh Leadership World… But “flown to the other side of the world to deliver my signature keynote” wasn’t something I’d even dared to put on the vision board.

And yet. Here we are. I’ll reveal where I’m going once I land, and I’ll of course be bringing you the full debrief when I’m back. But for now, thank you. Genuinely. None of this can happen without you backing what I’m building.

But back to the issue at hand…

How to set KPIs your team won’t ignore

I did a training session towards the end of last year with a brilliant creative agency based in Shoreditch, and I keep coming back to this story because I see versions of it everywhere.

The business was growing quickly. New clients coming in, new people joining the team, exciting momentum building every month. And from the outside, it looked like things were going really well.

But internally, they were starting to feel the strain most growing teams eventually hit.

• Communication gaps.

• Confusion around priorities.

• The feeling that everyone is busy, but not always moving in the same direction.

So, naturally, they tried to solve it the way a lot of businesses do. More dashboards and metrics, more KPIs in a push to feel closer to the numbers. And everything became measurable.

But when I sat down with them properly, it became clear that most of those numbers weren’t actually driving behaviour. They existed in spreadsheets, got mentioned in meetings, maybe even looked good in reports… but nobody really felt connected to them at all.

And the reason this story resonated with me so much is because I’ve been that manager too.

I’ve built the giant colourful spreadsheets, tracking every possible metric.
I’ve convinced myself that if I could just measure more things, the team would suddenly click into alignment.

Yet instead, I remember sitting there week after week thinking:

“Are these KPIs wrong?”
“Why does this still feel so hard?”
“Why does it feel like I’m dragging everyone uphill?”

For a while, I blamed the usual suspects, motivation, priorities, workload etc. But deep down, I knew as their leader I had to take accountability for getting the team to actually care about hitting our KPIs.

So I took to finding out what. I started researching, asking them for feedback and making small changes. And very quickly, I discovered that the problem wasn’t my team. It was how I’d set the KPIs in the first place.

So let me walk you through the 4 shifts that turned our deadweight KPIs into real team-owned momentum.

And by the way, one of the reasons we built Custard was because we realised most managers need visibility into the human patterns affecting performance to stop the KPIs start slipping. Make sure you’re on the waitlist for all our launch-day, early-adopter offers.

The 4-Step KPI hitting playbook

Let’s do it

Step 1 - Don’t mix up goals and KPIs

Goals are the destination.
KPIs are the dashboard that tells you if you’re on track.

Dashboards don’t inspire or engage people.
Destinations do.

❌ KPI as a goal: “We need to send the newsletter every Friday.”

✅ Goal first, KPIs second: “We want a healthier sales pipeline so revenue is more predictable. Increasing qualified leads by 20% this quarter helps us get there. The newsletter is one way we’ll achieve that.”

When you lead with the bigger outcome and goal, you give your team clarity, and the freedom to decide how to get there.

Step 2 - 3 beats 10

You’ve probably seen a KPI doc like this:

• 9 KPIs

• All urgent

• All unconnected

• Chaos

But when everything is a priority, nothing is.

Instead, have 3-5 core KPIs for each individual, and 3-5 for the team. This gives people mental clarity and lets them zoom out to the bigger picture.

Step 3 - Stop dropping goals on people, co-create them

Disengagement toward a goal often comes from lack of involvement from the start.

If a KPI shows up out of nowhere, fully formed and unchangeable, people feel like it’s just another thing being done to them.

You want to flip that.

Before locking anything in, ask:

• “What do you think would make the biggest difference this quarter?”

• “What feels like a stretch, but possible?”

• “What support would you need to hit this?”

Action step:
Before finalising a goal or KPI, run a quick session (yes, even 15 mins in a team meeting) asking:
“Here’s the goal, what’s your take? What would be your top three ways to hit it?”

Step 4 - Check-ins should be a rhythm, never a rescue plan

Too many managers only ask about KPIs when something’s gone wrong.

So when they do check in, it creates panic, defensiveness, or the dreaded,
“Oh no… I forgot about that one.”

Instead, normalise having a checkin rhythm. Have one regular meeting where KPIs are reviewed, questions are asked, and progress is discussed.

I’m currently testing out doing it with my team weekly. Every Monday, 10am for 45 mins. They report on the data, I ask the questions.

In the past I’ve done it monthly and it’s worked well too, don’t put too much pressure on getting the perfect rhythm, just start with something.

Outside of that meeting, you don’t keep checking in. The checking up is where it becomes micromanagement. We must start to trust people to run their numbers.

Ask:

• “How are we tracking?”

• “What has gone well, that we should do more of?”

• “What hasn’t gone well, that we need to change”?”

Your 4-Step Playbook

1. Start with the outcome
    → “What do we want to be true if this goes well?”

2. Co-create, don’t dictate
    → “What do you think will move the needle?”

3. Three beats ten
    → “What are our top 3-5 focus areas this quarter?”

4. Review early and often
    → “What’s working, what’s stuck, what’s next?”

And honestly, this is only scratching the surface.

One of the biggest reasons we built Custard was because so many managers are drowning in data, but still struggling to understand what’s actually happening inside their team.

Inside Custard, managers get:

• Clear visibility into the patterns affecting performance, before they become bigger problems

• Weekly team insights that go beyond surface-level KPIs

• AI-powered leadership support to help managers actually take action, not just stare at dashboards

• A simple way to spot issues around communication, accountability, overwhelm and trust early

So instead of reacting when performance drops, managers can lead proactively with clarity and confidence.

We’re limiting the number of businesses we take in on launch day, so make sure you join the Custard waitlist.

But for now, cya, I’ve got a flight to catch. 🌏

H

I started this newsletter 3 years ago to share all the messy parts of my leadership journey, in the hope it would help just one other person. I haven’t skipped a single Tuesday morning since. And we just hit 28 THOUSAND subscribers (what the hell). So just a huge, huge thank you for being here.

This week I'm running an online workshop on the topic you've been asking me about more than anything else: 1:1s. Seats are limited and it's this Thursday, you do not want to leave this one until later. Register here.

Most managers are exhausted by meetings

We prep the agenda, block the time and show up ready. And yet somehow, it feels like we’re the only one in the room who actually cares??

Nobody’s engaged or driving anything forward. Then somehow, next week, we’ll all do it again.

I felt this way for years, and since building Fresh Leadership World, I’ve sat with hundreds of managers who feel exactly this way too. Good, brilliant, smart managers who are genuinely trying. But something just isn’t sticking when it comes to our meetings.

And just like I did, we often default to blaming it on the team or the company culture. And don’t get me wrong those things play a part. But when I moved into a Director position, I quickly realised I couldn’t blame others for the lack of accountability in my team any longer. So I started looking inward at my own behaviour inside meetings, and how I might be unintentionally damaging accountability in the team.

And here’s what I found. 4 mistakes I was making repeatedly that were killing accountability from the inside.

So let’s unpack them all, including how I turned every single one of them around:

1. I was running the meeting myself, every time

I thought it was my job. So I’d set the agenda, talk through the updates, fill the silences, come up with the solutions. I was the one holding it all together every time and it felt like that was what good leadership looked like.

But what I actually felt was exhausted. I was doing all the work in the room while everyone else sat back and received. And no matter how much energy I brought into it, I’d leave feeling like nothing had really landed.

So I tried something new… I appointed someone on my team to run the meeting instead. I gave them the chair, the agenda, and the responsibility of keeping the group on track and making sure we all left with clarity on next steps. Then I rotated it every week, someone new took the wheel.

The energy in the room changed immediately. When people know they’re going to have to run it at some point, they show up differently to every session. They start paying attention to how the meeting flows, what works, what doesn’t. They develop empathy for how difficult it actually is to run a good meeting, and that made them better contributors even when it wasn’t their turn.

It also just became a bit more fun. People were building real skills like presenting, chairing, holding a room, and you could see them grow into it week by week.

2. I was bringing the data instead of letting my team bring it

For a long time, I thought being prepared meant I should be the one with all the numbers. I’d pull the data together in the spreadsheet, then walk the room through the metrics, explain where things stood etc.

But what I didn’t realise was that I was doing my team’s accountability work for them every single week.

Because the moment I imputted that data, I was taking ownership of it. I was the one who’d looked at the numbers, interpreted them, decided what they meant. By the time I presented them to the room, my team weren’t accountable for those results. I was.

The process of finding the data, understanding it, and then having to explain it to a room of people is where ownership actually gets built. When someone has to stand up (in person or virtually) and tell the group where a number is and why it’s there, something shifts in them. They stop being someone who works on a thing, and instead become someone who is responsible for a thing. That’s the difference between task completion and genuine accountability.

Now it works like this: Tisha, our Social Media Executive, is responsible for our social performance, so each week, she pulls the data and reports on it to the team in our 10am meeting. Levi, our Ops Manager, does the same for lead generation and workflows. I’m not telling them what the numbers say, they’re telling me. And because they know they’re going to have to explain it, they think harder about the why behind it before they even enter the room.

Every update, every metric, every status should come from them, not you.

3. I was answering my own questions

My job as a leader in the meetings is to ask the questions nobody else was asking:

• Why are the numbers there?

• What are we doing about it?

• What’s the risk if we don’t act?

• Who owns this? By when?

But I’d ask the question, feel the silence when nobody had an immediate answer, and then fill it myself because I felt awkward. Every time. The second nobody answered immediately I’d jump straight in with my own answer.

I told myself I was being helpful and that I didn’t want anyone to feel put on the spot. But what I was actually doing was taking the accountability straight back.

The answer to your question isn’t yours to give. It belongs to your team, and the only way they find it is if you stay quiet long enough for them to get there. That silence feels slightly uncomfortable (I know, I’ve sat in it many times stood on stages doing Q&As), but that discomfort is the feeling of accountability being built in real time.

Ask the question. Then stop talking. Give them space to think and own.

4. I was always the ideas person

For a long time, I thought one of my greatest strengths as a leader was being the ideas person in the room.

Someone would raise a problem and I’d already be halfway to the solution before they’d even finished speaking. I could move fast, unblock things, and keep momentum high.

But eventually, I noticed that the more I over-functioned in meetings, the more my team under-functioned.

The faster I answered, the less they thought.
The quicker I solved, the less ownership they took.
The more I rescued the room, the more the room relied on being rescued.

And eventually, I realised I hadn’t built a highly accountable team. I’d built a highly dependent one.

Leadership researcher Liz Wiseman talks about this in her work on Multipliers. Intelligent, capable leaders can accidentally diminish the people around them by becoming the constant source of answers, ideas, and direction.

If someone consistently jumps in with the answer, eventually the group learns:
“Wait for Heather.”

Now, when somebody raises a challenge in a meeting, I try incredibly hard not to be the first person to fill the silence.

Instead, I ask:
“What do you think we should do?”
“What options have we got here?”

Because leadership should never be about trying to prove you are the smartest person in the room, but instead, building a room full of smart people.

Want to go deeper?

Meetings set the direction, but 1:1s are where accountability lives or dies.

If your 1:1s keep getting cancelled, or they happen but they feel awkward and surface-level, or you’re saving the real conversations for the annual appraisal and wondering why things keep slipping, that’s exactly what I’m tackling in our next live workshop.

I’m going to walk you through the exact 1:1 system I’ve refined over years of managing teams and coaching leaders.

See you there,
H

P.S. If you want a system that helps you actually follow through on all of this, we're building something inside Custard right now that I think you're going to love. A brand new 1:1 module that takes everything I've talked about today and puts it directly in the hands of your managers. It's coming very soon. Join the Custard waitlist here.

I have a question I want you to take a moment to consider… When did you last get feedback that genuinely stung?

The kind of feedback that landed somewhere uncomfortable, and your first instinct was to push back on, explain away, or dismiss it entirely.

Now here’s the harder question: Were they right?

Because most of the time, and I say this as someone who has been on the wrong end of this more than once, the feedback that makes us most defensive is the feedback that’s the most true.

We don't get defensive about things that are miles off. We tend to only get defensive about things that are close enough to hurt.

And when we get defensive, when we dismiss, explain away, or shut down, we miss the exact information that would make us better. That missed information compounds.

And over months, over years, it becomes the difference between a leader who grows and one who doesn’t.

The one thing causing us to miss it? Ego.

Not ego in the “arrogant CEO” way, but ego in a quieter way.

An internal voice that says I already know this. I’ve got it handled. That feedback isn’t really about me. The one that makes you get angry when someone tells you something uncomfortable, even when (especially when) they’re right.

The habit of ego

In 2008, Google set out to answer a question that sounds almost arrogant: do managers even matter? They analysed performance data, feedback surveys, and interviews across thousands of their own teams to find out what separated their best managers from their worst.

This is Google. A company with more data, more rigour, and more resources than almost any organisation on the planet.

And their answer was: the best managers are the ones who have self-awareness. The willingness to hear hard truths and do something about them.

Feedback matters more than any other leadership skill, because you can’t develop emotionally if you’re defensive. You can’t build trust with your team if they sense you’re not really listening. You can’t grow if you’re busy protecting your current self-image.

And the thing blocking almost all of it? Ego.

I’ve f*kd up because of my ego many times

The first time I really noticed it, my manager told me the marketing materials I’d produced weren’t good enough. Childish, he’d said. And he was right, I’d left them last minute, rushed them and cut every corner possible. But my immediate reaction wasn’t fair point. It was defensive and annoyed. How dare he??

Except they were crap. And my ego meant it took me far longer than it should have to hear it and actually do something about it. I still cringe now.

The second time felt worse because I thought I was doing something good. I had a developer on my team who was brilliant but quiet, and I pushed him with public speaking and stretch projects, certain I knew what was best for his career.

He told me eventually that I was micromanaging him into confidence he didn’t want. Pushing everyone down one path. My path.

My ego fired straight back: I’m only trying to help you.

But that feedback changed the way I lead entirely. After that feedback, I learned our role in leadership is to understand what drives each person and work with that. Not try to force them all down one path.

Neither lesson would have landed if I hadn’t got my ego out of the way long enough to hear it.

Ego: The hardest habit to overcome

We're all terrified to admit we have a big juicy ego.

But we need to collectively learn that ego isn’t a character flaw, it’s just a protection mechanism.

When someone challenges your work or your approach, your brain registers it similarly to a physical threat, so your nervous system responds before your rational mind even gets involved.

But leadership requires you to override that wiring. Because the higher you go, the less likely people are to tell you what you need to hear… Unless you’ve made it genuinely safe to do so. And you can’t make it safe if you get defensive every time they try.

So let’s look at how we can practially start pushing our ego to the side.

2 practical ways to reduce ego in leadership

Of course, this wouldn’t be an In The Making article without some actual, real, practical ways to overcome this, so let’s do it…

1. Create a personal feedback habit

Most leaders only get real feedback in formal reviews, which means it’s infrequent, high-stakes, and therefore easy to dismiss. Instead, ask one question regularly: in 1:1s, after projects, in passing:
“What’s one thing I could do differently here?”
The more casual the ask, the more honest the answer

2. Train yourself to say “tell me more” before you respond.
When feedback lands and your first instinct is to defend, explain, or justify, don’t.
Just say: tell me more.
It buys you time, it signals safety, and it almost always gives you information you wouldn’t have had otherwise. Nine times out of ten, the first thing they say isn’t the full thing.

The best place to start is your 1:1’s

If you want to know whether your ego is getting in the way of your leadership, your 1:1 conversations are the diagnostic.

So if the stories above resonated, next week I’m running a free, online workshop on exactly this: How great managers run successful 1:1s.

I’ll be sharing the tried and tested framework used by over 20,000 managers: what to cover, how to structure the conversation, and how to make your 1:1s the place where your team actually tells you the truth.

It’s free and it’s insanely practical. I can’t wait to see you there.

Peace,

H

Can we take a second to acknowledge that we’re almost halfway through 2026 already? Where has the time gone???

And if you’re anything like me, there are probably a few things you told yourself you’d do differently this year that have quietly slipped down the priority list.

For a lot of managers I speak to, 1:1s are one of them.

When things get busy, they’re the first thing to go. They feel like admin and one more thing on an already impossible list.

But as I’m sure you know by now, I’m verrry passionate about 1:1s…

Done well, 1:1s prevent the last-minute PIPs, the escalations, the resentment… all of it.

And I’ve spent years testing and refining a system for this with hundreds of managers. I’ve seen what changes when people start running 1:1s properly with the right kind of questions.

SO for the first time ever, I’m hosting a free live session on this exact topic.

💥 How great managers run successful 1:1s 💥

Steal the tried and tested framework used by thousands of managers

📅 Thursday 21st May
⏰ 3pm BST / 9am CT
👉 Save your free spot here

You’ll learn:

• The biggest mistakes managers make with 1:1s (and how to stop making them)

• How to make your 1:1s a space where honest feedback flows both ways (the exact questions, tone, responses and more)

• [BONUS] Take away the exact agenda I use to make every 1:1 feel like a conversation worth having

You’ll walk away with something you can actually use straight away. No fluff, just my simple system that works.

Hope to see you there,
H

P.S. If you’ve ever said “my door is always open” to your team, we need to talk about why that’s probably not working the way you think it is.

See you on the 21st.

This weekend I did something I’ve not done in a long time… Spent a full 5 days away from work.

That’s the power of watertight systems and a team that doesn’t just “hold the fort”, but that makes things better in my absence.

It’s what every manager should be aiming for: leading in a way that creates freedom and resilience, so you get to really switch off (because you bloomin deserve it).

Tomorrow I’m back in the office, feeling refreshed AF and ready to dive into our Custard beta launch. We’ve got 20 incredible businesses joinig us, and I can’t WAIT to show you the results.

Now, let’s talk pay rises

They’re more than just money, they’re a symbol of fairness, respect, and care.

In every small business I’ve worked in (including my own now), I’ve always done 6-monthly pay reviews and can confidently say I pay over the odds to keep great people. They’re worth it and they deserve it.

And I will keep fighting the good fight with senior leadership to pay their teams more fairly.

But the annoying truth is, as the managers, we don’t always get a say. Often, we have little or no control over the raises our team gets. Then even when you do give someone a raise, it’s rarely the magic pill you hope it will be. The buzz fades fast.

What actually lasts is how people feel at work every single day.

So when your team asks about pay rises and there’s no budget, I know it’s frustrating, but don’t panic.

Here’s what we can do for them instead, and it might matter more than you think.

What to say when they ask for a pay rise (but you can’t give it)

The most important thing for me here is transparency.

Please never string your team along with false promises. We’ve all been on the receiving end of that, it’s often done with best intentions, but it’s manipulative and unfair.

Instead, we need total transparency, something like:

“You’re absolutely right to ask. Pay matters. At the moment, the budget isn’t there, and I don’t want to disrespect you in any way with false promises. What I can do is make sure we keep your development moving, and look at giving you the flexibility you need to thrive here. And as soon as we’re in a position to revisit pay, you’ll be first in line.”

Then let’s focus on what we could do to keep their morale high…

1. Recognition

Research shows, that once your basic needs are covered, money stops being the thing that keeps you in a job. What really matters is the non-financial stuff: praise, appreciation, feeling like your work is valued.

YET, the number of workers who say they’ve been praised in the last 7 days just hit a 15-year low??? So then, if recognition is free, powerful, and proven to keep people engaged… Why aren’t more managers using it?

Imagine smashing a project deadline, pouring in extra hours, and then… silence. No comment or thanks. Then over time, it eats away at motivation more than the size of your salary ever could.

Recognition is simply the small, frequent thank-yous that build lasting engagement. And in my experience, the managers who are best at this are specific.

Moving away from “good job”, and instead saying, “The way you handled that client’s objections in the meeting was sharp, you kept the deal moving.”

Recognition is free. It just takes paying attention.

2. Growth

If pay isn’t moving, progress has to.

I’ve seen brilliant managers keep people engaged for years simply by creating stretch, variety, and learning.

It doesn’t have to be formal training programmes. It can be:

• Pairing them with someone more senior for shadowing.

• Rotating them onto a different type of project.

• Asking them to lead a client presentation or internal initiative.

3. Belonging

You could pay someone above market rate, but if they feel excluded, ignored, or disconnected, they’ll still be scrolling LinkedIn job ads on their lunch break.

I know cuz I’ve been that person.

Belonging is built in the little things. As managers, we must carve out time to learn about the people in your team, their diverse opinions and experiences. Learn what they love and what they hate. Learn about their passions and their dreams.

I’ve seen teams transform morale just by starting a Friday ritual: 15 minutes in the calendar, everyone brings one win and gives a shout-out to someone else.

It seems so, so simple yet so few managers ever do it.

It creates a rhythm of connection. It tells people: “You matter here.” and “We care more about the numbers”

Final Thought

Pay rises keep people content in the short term. But what truly keeps them energised is feeling seen, growing, and belonging.

But no one teaches us managers how to do that. You’re thrown in, expected to figure it out on your own, while juggling deadlines, KPIs, and your own self-doubt.

That’s exactly why I built Custard.

It’s a manager intelligence platform that tells you, every single week, exactly how your team is actually feeling, and what to do about it.

If you want to be the kind of manager who keeps great people without needing a big budget to do it, join the Custard waitlist for all the juicy info.

All the best,

H

We measure everyyy KPI in business. Revenue, churn, pipeline, deadlines. We obsess over those numbers.

But culture… The single biggest predictor of whether a business will succeed or fail? We do a survey once a year, cross our fingers, and hope for the best.

That always felt insane to me. So built something to change it.

It's called Custard. Real feedback from your team in under 30 seconds, anonymously. And then AI (responsibly trained on everything I know about leadership) tells your managers exactly what to do about it.

And in less than a week, we’ve got 700 people on the waitlist. Don’t miss out:

[Join the Custard waitlist]

Now.. Back to the point

6 words the greatest leaders NEVER use

Earlier this month I was running a workshop with a senior leadership team. An incredibly talented group of middle managers, but with some big pressure to perform from their seniors. And within the first ten minutes, I’d heard one leader on the phone say three times:

“I just need to check…”

Just.

It’s one word. 4 letters. And it was sneakily dismantling everything this leader was trying to say before she’d even finished her sentence.

And I don’t want to sound preachy here, because for years, one of my biggest insecurities as a leader was my vocabulary. I would avoid speaking in meetings because I was convinced I sounded stupid.

I thought if I knew more fancy words, I’d sound like I belonged. But in truth, it was never my lack of vocabulary that was the problem, it was certain small words I was hiding behind.

The way you speak is a skill. And like every other leadership skill, it can be practiced and improved. So I started small. One word at a time.

That’s exactly what I’d recommend here. Pick one from this list this week, then notice how often it comes up, and eventually replace it altogether.

So here are the 6 I’d cut first.

[Quick disclaimer: Not all of these are single words. Some sit inside phrases, but it's usually one word doing all the damage]

1. “Just”

“I just wanted to check…” “I just thought maybe we could…” “I just need five minutes…”

Every time you use it, you’re shrinking yourself before you’ve even made your point. You’re apologising for taking up space and signalling that what you’re about to say probably isn’t that important.

Cut it entirely. Say what you mean and own it.

2. “Always.” “Never.” “Everyone.”

This one changed how I communicate at work and at home.

In psychology, these words are called ‘absolutist language,’ and they’re one of the most well-documented triggers for defensive behaviour in human communication. Therapists flag them in couples counselling. Conflict researchers flag them in negotiations. And managers use them every single day without realising the damage they’re doing.

Here’s why they’re so dangerous: When someone hears “you always do this”, they don’t hear the feedback. Their brain immediately goes hunting for evidence to disprove it. Every exception. Every counterexample.

“You always miss deadlines.” “Actually I hit the deadline in March.”

And just like that the conversation is no longer about the behaviour you needed to address. It’s about whether your word choice was accurate. You’ve handed them an escape route and the real issue got buried.

It’s just as destructive at home by the way. “You never listen.” “You always do this.” The moment an absolute lands, the other person stops hearing the feeling behind it and starts building a defence case.

Swap it for the specific.

“In the last three weeks I’ve noticed…” “This is the third time this month that…”

Specific is harder to argue with, and it keeps the conversation on the behaviour.

Which as a leader, is exactly where you want to be.

3. “Sorry”

Apologising for asking a question, having a thought or for existing in a meeting.

I see it constantly (especially in women). Sorry should be one of the most powerful words in our entire vocabulary. It should mean something. But when you use it forty times a day as a social reflex, it stops meaning anything at all and it starts eroding all the authority you’ve worked hard to build.

Save your sorry for when you genuinely mean it.

4. “Does that make sense?”

This one is sneaky because it sounds like good leadership. Like you’re making sure everyone’s with you. But what you’re actually doing is asking for reassurance.

Does that make sense? translates as: I’m not sure I explained that well. Please tell me I did.

Swap it for: “Let me know if you have any questions?”

Same intention but with slightly different energy. One signals doubt whilst the other signals confidence.

5. “I don’t mind”

Ok I must admit this is one I have a personal vendetta against. When I ask Char what she wants for dinner and she says:

“I don’t mind.”, then I suggest doing a salmon pasta and she says “mm I’m not sure about that”.

So… You minded, Char. You minded the whole time!! haha.

But back at the office, this looks like:

“Which approach should we take?” “I don’t mind, whatever the team thinks.”

“Should we go with option A or B?” “Honestly, I don’t mind either way.”

But you do mind. Even if you need a little longer to think about it, you do have an opinion and that opinion is valid. You have a preference. And every time you say “I don’t mind” you’re not being collaborative, you’re opting out of making a decision.

You don’t need to always dictate the answer… You can still invite input, i.e: “I’m leaning towards option A, what are your thoughts?”, but lead with your view first.

That’s what both your team, and seniors, are looking for from you.

6. “Hopefully”

“Hopefully we’ll hit the target this quarter.” “Hopefully the team will get there.”

Every time we say hopefully, we’re handing our power to chance. We’re telling our team (and ourselves) that outcomes are out of our hands and that we’re a passenger.

Great leaders don’t hope. They plan, act, course-correct, then communicate. Replace hopefully with “We’re on track to…” or “Here’s what we’re doing to get there.”

Yoda said it best. "Do or do not. There is no try."

Final thoughts

Although it can feel scary, language truly is one of our greatest leadership tools, and most of us are using it against ourselves without even knowing it.

I’d LOVE to hear from you, drop a comment and let me know which one you’re most guilty of:

Leave a comment

Peace,

H x

P.S. If you haven’t joined the Custard waitlist yet, you’re truly missing out on all the behind-the-scenes fun. See you there.

It is my HONOUR to finally share this with you.

The team and I have spent the last 5 months building something to raise the standard of management forever.

Introducing… Custard.

A professional-grade AI platform that turns managers into powerhouse leaders, using weekly team pulse surveys, real feedback, and tailored action plans using all my education.

So here we go, the Custard waitlist is officially open

👉 Join the waitlist here (for all the juicy behind the scenes and updates)

But… Wtf is Custard?

Google spent years studying team performance. Their conclusion: 70% of team engagement variation comes down to the manager. Not a strategy. Not the SLT initiatives. The direct manager.

That means our managers can either be our biggest risk… Or our greatest competitive advantage. Custard makes sure it’s the second.

With weekly, anonymous pulse feedback surveys, it takes less than 30 seconds for each team member to share their real-time thoughts, feelings and feedback.

Based on your team’s responses, every manager gets a personalised dashboard with actionable suggestions pulled from my proven leadership frameworks.

Think:

• “Your team is scoring low on psychological safety, here’s a direct conversation to have in your next 1:1” or

• “Recognition is down this week, here are three ways to fix it before Friday.”

I’ve been working on this with my incredible team (and a world-class developer) for the last few months and I can’t believe we’re finally showing you.

👉 Join the waitlist here to get all the exclusive info (including how you can be one of our Founding members)

You’ve been here for so many milestones

From my first Instagram videos, to Fresh Start, to my book…

And now this is the most important next step for me. Because i’m on a mission to raise the standard of management globally. For good. Custard is how we do that.

Launching publicly in June 2026.

Thank you for being part of this, always.

H x

If you caught the sneaky teaser I posted yesterday… you’ve already had a tiny glimpse. But the team and I have been building something in secret for the last 5 months, something I wish existed when I was managing teams.

Tomorrow marks the start of a whole new era both for me personally, and for our business and team. I can’t wait for you to see what we’ve built.

11am sharp tomorrow morning, keep an eye on your inbox for the details.

But today we’re here to talk about the the a point in most management journeys where things start to feel so much heavier than they should.

This is the moment many managers describe in similar ways:

“My team won’t take ownership.”
“I feel like they don’t take accountability unless I micromanage the outcome”
“They only act when I tell them what to do.”

Was I the problem?

I remember a period early in my management career where I felt constantly interrupted. My team was engaged, communicative, and clearly comfortable coming to me, which I initially saw as a positive sign. I had worked hard to be approachable, supportive, and present and I wanted to be the kind of manager people could rely on.

But they reled on me for everything.

Small decisions were brought to me and work was paused until I gave input. People would message with “quick questions” that, if I am honest, they already knew the answer to. At first, I took this as trust. Over time, it became something else entirely.

The more I stepped in, the more they stepped back. And eventually, I reached a point where I realised something uncomfortable.

My team was failing to take ownership because I’d trained them not to.

Accountability is not a personality trait

One of the biggest misconceptions in management is that accountability is something individuals either have or do not have. That some people are naturally “owners” and others are not.

In reality, accountability is not a personality trait. It is a response to an environment.

If a team consistently defers decisions, avoids responsibility, or waits for direction, it is rarely because they lack capability or ambition. More likely it is because the system they operate within has taught them that this is the safest, or most efficient, way to work.

For example:

• If decisions are always checked or overridden, why would people keep making them?

• If managers regularly step in to “fix” things, why would the team try to solve them?

• If ownership is unclear, it naturally will flow upward.

And so, without intending to, many managers create teams that are highly dependent on them, while simultaneously feeling frustrated by that very dependency.

The micromanagement line

Micromanagement does not usually begin with a desire to control. It begins with a desire to care.

You want things to go well. You want to support your team. You want to ensure standards are met and deadlines are hit. So when something feels uncertain or off-track, you step in. You offer guidance, provide clarity, or take something back to move it forward.

In isolation, these actions feel helpful. But over time, they create a pattern. And that pattern sends the clear message that: “The manager is ultimately responsible for making this work.”

Once that belief is embedded, behaviour follows. People escalate sooner, they seek reassurance more frequently and they hesitate to act independently because they have learned that they do not need to.

This is where many managers find themselves stuck. They are working harder than ever, trying to drive performance, while unintentionally reinforcing the very behaviours that are holding their team back.

My 4 step accountability system

After 10+ years managing teams myself, and training thousands of managers across different industries, I’ve seen the same pattern over and over again.

When a team lacks accountability, it’s rarely because the people are wrong.

It’s because the system is.

High-performing teams don’t rely on motivation, pressure, or “stepping up.”
They run on clear ownership and consistent behaviours that make accountability the default. And the good news is, this is something you can build.

Here are the four shifts I’ve seen work time and time again to move a team from dependency to real ownership:

Step1: Make the ownership explicit.

Every piece of work, every project, every outcome should have a clear owner. Not a group of people involved, not a shared responsibility, but one person who is accountable if it succeeds or fails. Without this clarity, accountability becomes diluted, and decisions are delayed.

Step 2: Change how you respond to your team.

When questions come your way, particularly those that do not require your expertise, resist the instinct to answer immediately. Instead, redirect the responsibility back. Asking “What do you think?” or “What would you do if I wasn’t here?” creates a moment of ownership.

It feels slow at first, but it builds capability far more quickly than providing answers ever will.

Step 3: Resist the urge to rescue

When something begins to slip, it is natural to want to step in and fix it. But each time you do, you reinforce the idea that accountability sits with you. Instead, hold your team within the problem. Ask them how they plan to resolve it. Support them, but do not take it away from them.

Step 4: Use questions, not answers

If you want your team to take ownership, you need to stop jumping in with answers and start leading with questions. The moment you tell someone exactly what to do, you take the thinking away from them, and over time they learn to rely on you instead of figuring things out themselves.

Questions do the opposite, they push responsibility back to the individual and force them to think, reflect, and come up with solutions.

For example, when something goes wrong, like missing a target, it’s easy to default to direction:

• ❌ “You’ve struggled to get responses, try emailing or posting next time.”

• ❌ “I don’t want to see the same results next month.”

But this keeps ownership with you.Instead, shift to questions:

• ✅ “Since we’ve struggled this month, what projects could you work on now to build better systems for next month or quarter?”

• ✅ “How can we make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

Instead of being told what to do, your team is thinking through the problem, owning the solution, and taking responsibility for the outcome.

A final reflection

If you recognise yourself in this, you are not alone. This is one of the most common challenges managers face, especially the ones who care the most about doing a good job. And the frustrating part is, it can feel like a people problem. Like your team just needs to step up.

But in reality, it’s almost always a system problem. And the good news is, that means it’s fixable.

That’s exactly what I’ve become a bit obsessed with solving over the last 6 months. And tomorrow, I’m going to show you what I’ve been building that solves this in a very scalable and fast way inside every team on the planet.

Something that gives you real visibility into ownership, accountability, and what’s actually happening inside your team, so you’re not guessing, reacting late, or carrying everything yourself.

But… More on that tomorrow 👀

H

We’re standing just over a week away from announcing something we’ve been building for a long time. We’ve got a big photoshoot tomorrow, and you’ll hear from me next week 👀 22nd April. 11am BST.

But, back to the very important topic at hand, we need to discuss…

An uncomfortable truth for middle managers about AI

Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, published a blog post arguing that AI could take over much of what middle managers do. Track projects. Move information up and down. Keep teams aligned. Of course all the news outlets lapped it up.

And to be fair, he has somewhat of a point. A lot of what happens in the middle layer of organisations is information admin: status updates, progress reports, chasing approvals. If AI can handle that, fine. Literally nobody went into management because they wanted to be a human relay station.

But here’s the part that the article (and Dorsey himself) glosses over. That coordination work is never what management is supposed to be. It’s just what management becomes when organisations haven’t developed their people properly.

And that distinction, between managing and actually leading, is one we’ve always understood. We just never truly had to choose between the two. Until now.

Management vs The Roman Empire

In his blog post, Jack Dorsey uses the Roman army as his metaphor for management in modern organisations. He explains that layers of command existed because humans couldn’t move information fast enough due to long distances. Therefore, her argues that we don’t need as many layers now that AI can move it faster than any human ever could.

But Roman centurions weren’t just passing messages down the line. They were the person their soldiers would follow into something terrifying, they held the line when strategy collapsed at first contact, they read the field in real time and made judgment calls that no general, however well-informed, could make from a distance.

That’s not a manager. That’s a leader.

And that part can’t be automated. Not because AI can’t track a project or flag a risk, it can. But because leadership at it’s core isn’t about processing information, it’s about building people up to be courageous enough to do hard things. It’s the conversation after someone gets passed over, or the team that’s quietly burning out before it shows up in any dashboard.

A manager coordinates. A leader makes people feel like it’s worth showing up.

AI is coming for the first one. It was never going to touch the second.

How most managers operate

Think about how most managers end up in the role. They were brilliant at their job, so they got promoted, but nobody really prepared them for what came next. So they defaulted to what they knew… Doing and tracking, rather than leading.

They weren’t shown how to step into a difficult performance conversation, so we avoided it and filled the diary with status update meetings instead.

Decisions escalate upward because nobody had built the courage or clarity for people to make calls themselves. Meetings multiplied because alignment hadn’t been built through trust, so it had to be manufactured through process and tracking.

The managing expanded to fill the space where the leading should have been. And for a long time. So AI isn’t replacing middle management, it’s just filling the admin space where real leadership should have been all along.

So what does this mean, for us managers?

Middle management isn’t going anywhere. But the version of it that hides behind a full calendar and a project tracker is on borrowed time.

The managers who survive and fly in an AI-augmented organisation will be the ones who push back on prioritising the admin work in the first place.

The ones who were having the honest conversations, developing their people, and building the kind of culture that allows a flatter structure to actually function.

That’s not a management job, its a true leadership role. And it turns out it’s the same role most organisations have undervalued for years, because the admin layer was so visible and so measurable that it crowded out the harder, quieter work.

AI removing the admin layer doesn’t remove that harder leadership work, it just makes it unavoidable. So the leaders left standing will need to be genuinely, not just administratively, good at leading people.

Final thoughts

The leaders vs managers debate has been around for decades.

We’ve written the books, rann the workshops, drawn the Venn diagrams. And somewhere along the way, most organisations nodded along, but just quietly carried on rewarding the wrong things.

AI hasn’t changed what good leadership looks like. It’s just starting to remove the hiding places.

For the managers (myself included) who once upon a time built our identity around being across everything, filling in the reporting spreadsheets, knowing every update, owning every decision… I’m afraid that role is shrinking.

But the leaders who built trust, grew their people, and made themselves less necessary over time? They’re exactly what a leaner, faster, AI-augmented organisation needs more of.

We’ve always known the difference between a manager and a leader.

It’s just that until now, we got away with never having to choose.

Peace,

H

P.S. I'm being deadly serious about this announcement on the 22nd. The middle management revolution is incoming.