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.

We’re gearing up over here to make a huge announcement on the 22nd of April. An announcement that will be our biggest ever business pivot to date. It’s something we’ve been working on very secretly since last year. But don’t worry, you will absolutely be the first to know (reply to this email with your best guesses 👀).

Oh, and it's officially Q2. Which means we’ve got 3 months of learning behind us and 9 months of opportunity ahead. What you do with yours is entirely up to you.

But one of the best places to start is your 1:1s. Because let me guess… They’ve become just a status update meeting? Or a moaning session?

You run through the task list, check in on the project, ask “anything else?” and wrap up in 20 minutes feeling like you’ve done your job as a manager. Tick.

But deep down, you know. Neither of you left that meeting feeling motivated, connected, or any different than when you walked in.

But it’s so very easy to turn that around (often with just ONE question)…

The problem with most 1:1s

For the business, our 1:1s matter more than you we think. Disengaged employees cost businesses more in turnover, lost productivity and quiet quitting than almost anything else. Your 1:1s aren’t just a cute connection tool, they’re truly a business one.

1:1s are one of the most powerful tools a manager has. And most managers are wasting them.

Here are the biggest mistakes we make:

• Turning them into progress reports. If your 1:1 could be replaced by a Slack message, it should just be one.

• The manager is doing all the talking. Managers who dominate 1:1s think they’re being helpful, but what they’re actually doing is filling the silence where their team member’s honesty should be.

• Staying on the surface. “How are you getting on?” answered with “Yeah, fine.” Fine is not a conversation. Fine is a door you forgot to open.

• Only having them when things are going wrong. By then, you’re already in damage control.

Most of us managers truly care about our people. It’s just that nobody taught us what a great 1:1 actually looks like. So lemme change that today:

The question that changes everything

A while back, I started introducing a new question into my 1:1s, and it was by far the most impactful.

Here it is:

“If you were to hand in your notice tomorrow, what would be the reason?”

Read it again.

This question does something most 1:1 questions don’t… It bypasses the polite, surface-level answer and goes straight to what actually matters to your team member.

It gives them permission to be honest without it feeling like a complaint, and it gives you intelligence you can actually act on.

People don’t usually leave out of nowhere. They leave after months of feeling unheard, undervalued, overlooked or stuck. And they’ve often already answered this question in their own heads long before they hand in that notice.

You’re just asking it before it’s too late.

What to do once you have the answer

There was a time I avoided asking questions like this entirely, simply because I was scared of what I’d hear. What if the team want more money? A promotion? Bigger opportunities? What if they wanted something I simply couldn’t give them? It felt safer not to know.

But the single biggest lesson I learned is this: Not asking doesn’t make the need go away. It just means your team member is sitting on it alone, and quietly making decisions about their future without you in the conversation.

But remember, our job isn’t to immediately deliver the thing they want. Our job as their leader is to take it seriously. To go away and find out if it’s possible, and if so, when. If it’s not possible, say that, honestly and directly. What people can handle is the truth. What they can’t handle is being strung along or kept in the dark.

But here’s where it gets really powerful. Once you know what someone wants, ask them two follow-up questions:

“What are you doing personally to get there?”

“How can we, as a company, support you?”

These two questions change the entire dynamic of the conversation, because suddenly you’re not the sole owner of their development, they are. You’re a partner in it, but you’re asking what they can do to achieve the goal (instead of it all being on you).

As managers, we can for sure open doors, create opportunities, and remove obstacles, but we cannot work for their growth more than they do. The accountability has to sit with them, and these follow up questions just make that clear in the most empowering way possible.

Final thoughts

Your 1:1s are not an admin task. They are your single greatest lever as a manager to retain, develop and genuinely connect with the people you lead.

The managers who get this right aren’t doing anything magical I promise, they’re just asking better questions, listening more deeply, and treating their team members as whole human beings who have ambitions, fears, and things that matter to them beyond the to-do list.

One slightly awkward question. Followed by one honest conversation.

That’s all you need to start.

Peace,

H

P.S. If you want my full 90 Day 1on1 agenda, please use and steal it here.

I asked on my Instagram story a few weeks ago: “If you’re not feeling good about work this week, DM me the problem to halve it”

And I got 100s of DMs, hearts pouring into work worries, anxieties and complex situations. But this one caught my eye…

So whilst this issue is complex (and crappy) it’s actually super common.

In this case, team members are leaving and bringing in more people simply isn’t an option.

I was in a similar predicament back in 2021, we desperately needed more developers to build our app, but it was near impossible to hire devs and we just couldn’t afford to bring more on, so we had huge gaps in expectation vs capacity and the existing team we’re struggling.

As their leader, I knew that even though I couldn’t add more people, I still needed to do something.

That’s when I built out my 5-Step Role Refresh. To reduce wasted resource as much as humanly possible.

But first, we need to be a little honest right now, I need to tell you something you won’t want to hear. Your team probably isn’t under-resourced. They’re under-organised.

So before you go back to your senior leadership asking for headcount you’re unlikely to get, try this first. It won’t cost you anything except honesty, and that’s exactly why most managers avoid it.

Step 1: The Role Report

You cannot fix what you cannot see.

Every person on your team needs to write up an accurate Roles & Responsibilities document of exactly what they do day to day. Not their job description. Not what they were hired to do. What they actually do.

If someone is taking out the bins, cleaning the windows, restocking the coffee… That goes on the list. All meetings included.

Most managers are shocked by what comes back and that’s the point.

Step 2: Traffic Light It

Now you take every task on every role report and you colour it.

Green: It plays to their strengths and adds genuine value to the business.

Amber: They’re OK at it, it gets done, but it wouldn’t be a tragedy if it disappeared.

Red: It’s a waste of their time and your money. It needs to go.

Step 3: Do, Ditch, Delegate

Now you act on what the traffic light is telling you.

Do the greens. Protect that work. Make space for more of it.

Ditch the reds. Automate or remove.

Delegate the ambers. Either to someone better suited, or out of the business entirely.

This step is where most managers go a littttle soft. They convince themselves the red tasks are actually necessary. They’re usually not. Be ruthless.

Step 4: Lay Down Boundaries

Without this step you’ll be back to square one within a fortnight.

As the manager, your job is to be the filter. Your seniors will keep pushing work down. That’s what they do. Your job is to push back. Not by moaning about capacity, but by being clear about what the team can and cannot absorb in a given week.

You set the boundary. You hold it. Nobody else will do it for you.

Step 5: Fiercely stick to the system

The last step isn’t a task. It’s a commitment.

No more pointless meetings that could have been an email. No more hours lost in inboxes. No more tasks that exist because they’ve always existed. You hold your team accountable to the new way of working and you hold yourself to it too.

This only works if you staight up refuse to let it slide back to normal.

Most workload problems aren’t a headcount problem, they’re a clarity problem. It’s just that nobody has stopped to ask whether the work actually needs doing, or whether the right people are doing it.

The Role Refresh won’t solve everything. But it will show you exactly where the waste is. And once you can see it, you have no excuse not to act on it.

Final thoughts

Good luck, be ruthless, it is in processes like these that your truly strengthened leadership will shine through.

Peace,

H

P.S. For the last 4 months, I have been building something very sneakily behind the scenes. This is a new direction for us as a business and for me entirely. You’ll find out more next week.

P.P.S. Want to go deeper? My book, Your Boss Era, is the whole playbook. 16 rules, frameworks and systems that turn good managers into the kind of leader people actually want to work for.

People are already running book clubs with it which I LOVE to see. Buy 20+ copies for your team, reply to this email with the receipt, and I’ll show up live for a 20-minute Q&A with your team.

Yesterday I was over at the Zoopla offices running my signature Leadership Level-Up day and as always, the conversations in the room reminded me why I love this work so much. The team are fab, 25 managers, all at different stages, all brilliant, but of course all facing different challenges.

But no matter the industry or the company size, and I hear some version of this story come up in my workshops all the time:

Someone gets promoted, they’re good at their job, they care deeply about the people around them, and honestly, that’s maybe why they got the role … Their manager saw someone who brought people together. Someone the team trusted.

And then the job starts. And almost immediately, something feels off.

They avoid the difficult conversation because they don’t want to make things awkward. They take work back from a team member rather than push back on a missed deadline. They agree in the meeting and quietly get annoyed afterwards or they say yes when every part of them wants to say no.

And they tell themselves it’s because they’re a good person. That they lead with empathy. That they’re just not the kind of leader who rules with an iron fist.

But underneath all of it, if they’re honest, is one quiet, persistent fear:

What if they don’t like me anymore?

Where it comes from

Most of us didn’t just wake up craving being ‘liked’

Somewhere along the way, being liked became proof that we belonged, and for a lot of us it started way before any job title. Families where keeping the peace just felt easier, schools where being agreeable kept you out of trouble, and then workplaces that quietly punished anyone who pushed back too hard.

Think back to the moment you first realised that being agreeable got you further than being honest. For me I think it was laughing at a joke that wasn't funny or going along with staying out late into the night drinking, because the alternative, the disappointment on someone's face when you said you wanted to go home, felt unbearable.

So we learned. We adapted. Approval felt like safety, and safety is a hard thing to walk away from even when you can see it’s holding you back.

But the very thing that makes you a genuinely good human, the fact that we care, that you feel things, that other people’s opinions actually matter to you, is the same thing that, left unchecked, chips away at your ability to lead them.

What it’s actually costing you

So it’s time we get honest about the bill here. Chasing being ‘liked’ feels easy in the moment, but it has a cost:

Your team stops growing: When you protect people from hard truths, you protect them from the feedback that would actually help them. They stay stuck. Their potential goes unrealised.

Your best people get frustrated. High performers don’t want a manager who keeps the peace at all costs. They want someone who will make the call, set the standard, and deal with the person who isn’t pulling their weight.

You carry everything. Every avoided conversation becomes a weight you carry instead. The same weight that lives in your chest on Sunday evenings.

You stop trusting yourself. You draft a message to your team, then rewrite it four times because you're not sure how it'll land.
You make a decision, then immediately wonder if you should have handled it differently.
You lie awake replaying a conversation from Tuesday.
Your instincts are still there, but you've overridden them so many times to keep others comfortable that you've stopped believing they're worth listening to.

How to stop

So what do you actually do with all of this?

I’ve watched the shift happen (in myself and in others) and it’s rarely a dramatic overnight change. It usually starts with one uncomfortable moment of honesty when you realise that by staying quiet, by keeping the peace, you haven’t been protecting anyone. You’ve been letting them down. That the approval-seeking you dressed up as empathy wasn’t really empathy at all.

I remember sitting across from someone on my team who had been struggling for months. I'd softened every piece of feedback I'd given her, told myself I was being kind, that she'd get there. But the truth was I didn't want the awkwardness. I was being a coward, softening feedback because I didn't want her to be upset with me.

Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And that’s where the work began for me.

I am absolutely still a work in progress on this one. Wanting to be liked ran deep for me, and unlearning it has been one of the slower, messier parts of my own leadership journey. But here’s what I wish someone had told me earlier:

1. Get curious about the discomfort
Next time you feel the urge to soften something, avoid a conversation, or say yes when you mean no, just pause. Ask yourself: am I doing this for them, or because I can’t tolerate how it might feel?
You don’t have to change anything yet. Just notice it. The awareness alone starts to loosen the pattern’s grip.

2. Separate being respected from being liked
Write down the names of the leaders who have had the biggest impact on you and I’d bet most of them weren’t the ones who kept the peace.
They were the ones who told you the truth, held you to a standard, and made you feel like your growth actually mattered to them.
That’s the leader your team needs you to be.

3. Start small by having one conversation you’ve been avoiding
Not every conversation all at once. Just one. Pick the smallest, lowest-stakes version of something you’ve been putting off, maybe a piece of feedback, an expectation you haven’t set clearly or a boundary you’ve been tiptoeing around.
Notice that the world doesn’t end and notice how much lighter you feel afterwards. You’ll build up the evidence which will slowly replace the fear with something more useful.

So what now?

If you recognised yourself anywhere in this, I’m not asking you to become someone you’re not. The care, the empathy, the deep investment in your people, those are assets. The world needs more leaders who actually give a damn.

But caring about people and needing their approval are not the same thing. One makes you a better leader. The other makes you a hostage.

The work is learning to tell the difference.

Peace,

H

BTW - I’m hosting a free live workshop tomorrow, Wednesday 25th March at 3pm GMT / 11am EDT and I’d love to see you there.

Why your culture feels off (and how to fix it)
and if today’s newsletter hit a nerve, this is the natural next step.

Working to be liked doesn’t just affect you, over time it shapes the culture around you. Standards drift. Ownership disappears. Energy drops. And suddenly everything feels polite but not productive, and you can’t quite put your finger on why.

In this session I’ll walk you through the exact process high-performing managers use to diagnose what’s really going on in their team, reset the culture fast, and make sure it doesn’t quietly slip again.

It’s free, it’s live, and there’ll be plenty of time for questions at the end

[Secure your spot here]

See you there

Maybe it’s because of the rain, but I’m reminiscing today about a holiday I went on to Greece back in 2018, where I spent the first three days answering Slack messages from my phone (woops).

“Quick question…”
“Can you check this?”

I remember sitting by the pool thinking it was ridiculous. I naively told myself it was because I was a good manager. My team needed me, I was the manager, so of course, they wanted my input, right?

But as we all know, the truth is far less flattering…

I hadn’t built a strong team, I had built a team that needed me to think for them.

I was the bottleneck and the problem.

The job of a leader isn’t to run the team, it is to build a team that can run without them. And the more I learned about building high-performing teams, the more obvious it became that I had accidentally designed a team that revolved around me…

I answered questions quickly.
I fixed small problems because it’s faster.
I jumped in to help when something felt messy.

All completely reasonable decisions in the moment, but stack enough of those moments together and suddenly the team learns something dangerous: When in doubt, ask the manager.

The KPI I now care about more than anything else

So after that holiday, I decided it was time to make some big old changes. There was one question I started asking myself regularly:

If I fully stepped away for two weeks, would my team still perform?

I call this my Independence KPI, a quick litmus test for how healthy my leadership actually is.

The answers are simple: yes or no.

Not “sometimes.”
Not “they’d probably manage.”

Yes or no.

And the question isn’t about whether the team would survive without you. It’s about whether they would continue performing and moving forward.

Would projects still progress?
Would decisions still get made?
Would the work stay at a high standard?

If the answer is no, it tells me something important… That my leadership system still depends too heavily on me. That’s why I use this KPI regularly. Because it forces a different kind of thinking as a manager.

Instead of asking, “Did I do enough this week?”
I start asking, “Did I level my team up enough that they don’t need me?”

It pushes me to coach better, delegate properly, and design clearer ownership inside the team. And over time, that’s what separates busy managers from genuinely high-performing ones.

High-performing teams don’t rely on one person to keep things moving, they run because the capability, judgement and ownership exist across the whole team.

But how do you actually build a team that runs without you?

Here’s the 5 steps I’d take today, to build independence inside my team

1. Coach the thinking, not just the outcome

Teams that run well without the manager require us to do something that managers rarely permit themselves to do: Slowwww the hell down.

One of the biggest shifts I made as a manager was resisting the urge to immediately answer questions. When someone comes to you with a problem, the natural instinct is to help.

You already know the answer and it would take ten seconds to explain it.

But that ten-second answer can, over time, create a ten-year dependency. So instead, I started responding differently:

• “Okay, talk me through what you’re thinking.”

• “If you had to choose right now, what would you do?”

It takes longer in the moment but your team start developing judgment. And once someone develops judgment, they stop needing permission for every decision.

2. Delegate properly, not just dump tasks

A lot of managers think they’re delegating when they’re actually just redistributing tasks.

“Can you send this?”
“Can you handle this piece?”

But that’s not actually delegation i’s task management.

Real delegation looks like this: Instead of giving someone a task, you give them ownership of the outcome. You explain the purpose and context, why it matters and what success looks like.

Then you step back.

The first few times this happens it will probably feel uncomfortable for both of you. That’s normal. Stick to it.

3. Make ownership visible

Another thing that helps teams operate independently is clarity about who owns what. If ownership is vague, everything drifts back to the manager. Because when nobody is clearly responsible, someone eventually has to step in.

So inside teams that run well, ownership is extremely clear.

Everyone knows:

• What they are responsible for

• What decisions they can make

• Where their boundaries sit.

Once that clarity exists, managers stop being the centre of every conversation and the team starts running more like a network than a hierarchy.

4. Practice letting go

This might be the hardest part.

Even when managers say they want more ownership in their team, they often struggle when it actually happens because everyone in your team will do things differently, to different standards and with different skills.

They might structure a project differently.
Approach a problem differently.
Communicate differently.

And your instinct might be to jump in and ‘correct’ it or change it. But unless the outcome is at risk, sometimes the most powerful leadership move is doing nothing.

Let them run with it, let them learn and let them refine their own style.

5. Measure the right thing

And finally, come back to the question that inspired this whole piece… could you step away for 2 weeks and the team would still perform?

That question forces you to think about leadership differently.

Instead of asking: “Did I do enough today?”

You start asking: “Did I build enough capability in the team?”

Peace,

H

Want to keep learning with me?

I’m running a free, online masterclass next week on exactly how to build a culture inside your team that people WANT to work in. It’s free, register here.

The first quarter of 2026 is coming to a close and if you’re anything like me, the new year goals are getting evvvver so slightly off track… That’s ok. We’re all in the same boat. Leading a team is no easy feat, so if you have started to feel any of the below:

• You’re repeating yourself more

• People need more chasing

• Standards feel a bit looser

• Meetings happen, but nobody really takes ownership afterwards

Before long, you might start doing what most managers do when this happens…

Add more. More reminders, more check-ins, more pressure, more of your own energy.

But usually, that’s not the real fix.

The managers who keep their teams performing well won’t push harder when things start to drift. Instead, they know how to spot the early signs, and reset standards before the whole thing turns into frustration, dependency and underperformance.

So… I’m running a free live workshop to show you exactly how that works:

💥 Why your culture feels off (and how to fix it)💥

The 4 fastest ways leaders rebuild standards and momentum

📆 Wednesday 25th March

⏰ 3pm GMT / 11am EDT

👉 Save your free spot HERE

In the session I’ll walk through the exact process strong managers use to reset standards and rebuild momentum inside their teams.

You’ll learn:

• The real reason most team cultures quietly drift
• The fastest way to spot what’s causing the dip in standards or ownership
• How to fix the issue using data, not guesswork
• How good managers keep culture strong so problems don’t creep back

If you’re sat there thinking nothing is drastically wrong in your team’s culture, but something isn’t right either.

This workshop will help you diagnose it and fix it.

Hope to see you there,
H x

P.S. If you manage people, culture is part of your job whether HR is involved or not. This session will show you how the best managers take control of it.

I had a request from one of our In The Making community members, Libby. She said something that really stuck with me:

“I think managers get a bad reputation online, and it can sometimes feel like a battle trying to prove you’re not a bad manager, that you’re genuinely trying to be a great leader.”

And she’s right.

Managers often spend a huge amount of time thinking about how to support their team, but very little time actually saying those things out loud. And showing their team how to be good team members.

Work moves quickly, conversations stay focused on tasks, and the bigger messages about trust, expectations, growth, and support often go unsaid.

Over time, that silence then creates guesswork. Team members start filling in the gaps themselves, sometimes assuming the worst.

So this week, we’re doing something a little different.

Below are 21 things us managers wished our teams knew, but we don’t always get the chance to say clearly.

I’m writing it as a list beacuse so you can use them as a starting point for a conversation with your team.

Sometimes the most powerful leadership move is simply saying these phrases outloud to them, so they don’t have to fill in the blanks.

And while this list is written from a manager’s perspective, it’s also a good moment for a bit of reflection. Some of these are things our own leaders might quietly wish we understood too.

So with that in mind…

Here are 21 things your manager probably wants you to know.

21 things your manager wants you to know

1. If you’re stuck, tell me earlier rather than later. Small problems are easy to fix.

2. When you bring a problem, bring an idea for a solution too.

3. I do notice the effort, even when the result isn’t perfect.

4. If you disagree with something, I’d much rather hear it than have you quietly resent it.

5. You won’t lose respect by asking questions, but you might by pretending you understood something you didn’t.

6. If something takes longer than expected, letting me know before the deadline goes a long way.

7. You don’t need to CC me into everything to prove you’re working.

8. I’m juggling more context than it probably looks like. If something seems odd, there’s often a reason behind it.

9. Not every piece of feedback is a huge deal. Sometimes it’s just a small tweak.

10. I genuinely appreciate it when someone takes initiative without being asked.

11. When meetings run well, it’s usually because you came prepared.

12. If something feels frustrating to you, chances are it’s frustrating to me too.

13. If you tell me what you want to learn or get better at, I’ll look for opportunities to help you practice it.

14. Your attitude on difficult days has more impact on the team than you might realise.

15. When you own a mistake quickly, it actually increases my trust in you. Please don’t try to pretend it didn’t happen.

16. The people who progress fastest are usually the ones who ask for feedback, not just wait for it.

17. I want you to succeed here. Your growth makes the whole team stronger.

18. If something feels confusing in a process, it’s probably confusing for others too. Pointing it out helps us improve the system.

19. The small things you follow through on are often what build the most trust over time.

20. Sometimes I’m under pressure from above too. I’m doing my best to balance that while still backing the team.

21. Just like you, I’m learning as I go too.

Drop a comment, I’d love to know which one resonated with you the most and why…

Leave a comment

Peace,

H

P.S. I’m running our next free community online masterclass in 2 weeks time, more details coming later this week

But if you want to have a sneak peak, check it out and register here

I’m in a very sunny Brighton today, running my full Leadership Level Up day with a brilliant sales team down here.

But before I step out, I’m sat in my hotel room thinking about something that keeps coming up in leadership conversations lately.

Change.

More importantly, our team’s resistance to any kind of change or newness.

And how the hell, as their leaders, do we lead through it? Especially if we don’t agree with the change ourselves?

Do we just lie, and pretend it’s all rosy? Or admit we don’t agree either, at risk of causing more resistance?

Let’s unpack…

Firstly, change is necessary. It’s what keeps businesses growing, teams improving, and results getting better.

But even with that in mind, it rarely has a positive reception.

If you’ve ever tried to introduce a new system, process, or way of working, you’ve probably been met with some (or all) of these responses:

• “This won’t work.”

• “We tried something similar before, and it failed.”

• “But this won’t work for me because…”

• OR silent resistance (more frustrating) where people just don’t do the new thing because they silently don’t believe in it.

Sound familiar?

As a leader, your job isn’t just to announce change. It’s to make it happen. And that means overcoming pushback, getting buy-in, and making sure the change actually sticks.

Here’s some ways I navigate change without pulling my hair out in the process:

Step 1: Understand why humans resist change (It’s not just stubbornness)

Before you can fix the resistance, you need to understand it. People don’t usually resist change just to be difficult. They resist because of how it makes them feel.

Common Reasons for Resistance:

• Fear of the unknown - We don’t know what this change means for us.

• Loss of control – They feel like something is being forced on them.

• More work upfront – Even if the change will help in the long run, it feels like extra effort now.

• Lack of trust – They don’t believe leadership is making the right decision.

• Comfort with routine – They know the old way, and change is uncomfortable.

Example:

I worked with a company last year who had just moved from fully email-based and office based communication to Slack, and the longer-standing team members resisted. They saw it as “just another tool” and didn’t want to invest time into something new.

After some digging, we found they actually felt left behind. Some of the older team didn’t quite understand the new tech.

But once they were shown why it was useful (fewer lost emails, quicker responses) and were given proper training, resistance dropped.

Step 2: Make it their idea (even if it was yours)

Fact: People are more likely to embrace change if they feel like they were part of the decision.

Instead of telling your team what’s happening, bring them into the process.

How to do it:

• Ask for input early. Even if the decision is already made, involve them in how it’s implemented.

• Frame it as an opportunity. Instead of “We’re changing this”, say “We have the chance to improve X - what do you think we should do?”

• Let them identify problems. Ask: “What’s frustrating about the current way we do things?” then position the change as the solution to that.

Let’s say this is something they’re really against, like coming back into the office for more days. We can’t change it, but we can ask questions like…

”Look, I know this isn’t ideal, but the change is happening. So what could we do to make it more enjoyable or less frustrating for you? What could we put in place?”

Step 3: Connect it to what they care about

People don’t care about company goals anywhere near as much as they care about how something affects them personally.

If you want them to buy in, you need to know the answer one simple question:

“What’s in it for me?”

How to Do It:

• Show how the change makes their job easier, not harder.

• Connect it to something they’re already frustrated with.

• Make it personal. How does this help them, not just the company? Does it help make them more valuable? Make a process smoother?

Example:

My friend who runs an accountancy business, rolled out a new reporting tool for her team recently that would save hours of manual data entry.

In her email to the team, instead of saying, “We’re implementing a new tool”
She said, “We’re eliminating 90% of the boring admin work - so you’ll have more time for the stuff that actually matters.”

Now, people wanted the change.

Step 4: Over-Communicate (Seriously, way more than you think you need to)

Change feels the most scary when we don’t have enough information. If they’re left in the dark, they’ll assume the worst.

We need to:

• Explain the ‘why’ repeatedly. People need to hear it multiple times before it sticks.

• Answer objections publicly. If one person raises a concern, chances are others have the same question. Address it openly. Most leaders shy away from this.

• Give updates often. Keep people in the loop so they don’t feel blindsided.

Step 5: Reward early adopters

Change spreads when people see it working.

If early adopters start to thrive and we help others to see that, they will soon follow.

Here’s a few ways i’ve done this in the past:

• Recognise and reward the people who embrace the change.

• Share success stories - make it clear that the change is actually helping.

Final thoughts: What stance do we take?

You don’t lie. And you don’t pretend you love it either.

You can acknowledge the change, and even name that it’s not favourable, without turning that discomfort into permission to resist it.

Great leaders don’t need to agree with every decision from above, but they do need to create clarity, steadiness, and direction through it.

You validate the feeling, you don’t validate opting out.

That’s the line.

If your team is resisting change, it’s not always because the change itself is bad or annoying. It’s often because they don’t understand it, trust it, or see how it benefits them.

Over to you

H x

P.S. If you’re looking to raise the standards of leadership inside your business, My Leadership Level-Up Days may be right for you. Enquire here.

It’s my last day in Bangkok today, and I’ve been running multiple leadership workshops whilst out here. Yesterday, I worked with a team inside the Ministry of Defence on ownership and accountability.

Then earlier this month, I was working alongside a growing tech business. They’ve got 65 people on the team now, which is always a tricky stage of growth.

It’s too big for the Founder to keep an eye on everything… But not quite big enough that all the systems and leadership layers are in place.

And it’s exactly when the cracks start to show.

Middle managers, as always, are the make-or-break layer for businesses going through this growth.

When they’re clear, confident, and aligned, the whole company runs smoothly. But when they’re underdeveloped or unsure, you get silos, duplicated work, and senior leaders being dragged back into the weeds.

So i’m working with the management team to step into real, systemised leadership, not just “doing.”

For the middle managers, if senior leadership always sees you as the one who jumps in and fixes, they’ll never see you as the person who can scale a team.

If you want the next title or seat at the table, the shift we must make is simple: stop measuring yourself by what you personally delivered, and start showing how your team delivered without you.

Here’s how…

Most of us are still doers

Most of us became managers because we were reliable, fast, and great at our jobs.

So when things get messy, the default is to jump back in and do it ourselves.

But the cost is high. Our team stops owning results and they wait for us to step in.
To them, you’re not the leader building capability… you’re the safety net picking up the slack.

The tell-tale signs you’re still the “doer”:

• You leave work drained, because you’ve solved everyone else’s problems on top of your own.

• Team members come to you for answers, not with solutions.

• Deadlines get met only if you personally push them over the line.

If this sounds familiar, here are…

Two quick fixes you can try this week:

1. Change your default response
When someone brings you a problem, resist the urge to solve it.

Instead, ask:
“What do you think we should do?”
“What have you tried so far?”
That simple shift pushes ownership back onto them.

2. Redefine success.
Stop measuring yourself by “how much I got done.” Instead ask:
“How much did my team deliver without me?”

These tweaks won’t solve everything, but they’ll give you a taste of what it feels like to step out of the doer role.

The final truth

Those small changes only scratch the surface.

If you want to fully step out of “super contributor mode” and into being the leader who scales a capable, accountable team… You need a system.

And that’s exactly what I built with Fresh Start.

Over 6 weeks, you’ll get the frameworks, scripts, and accountability tools to:

• Delegate without constantly chasing

• Build respect and trust without having to prove yourself daily

• Create a team that hits results without you being the bottleneck

So, if you’re ready to stop being the doer, and finally build a team that delivers without you, you only have 3 days left to join us inside Fresh Start.

And by the way, this (as always) is from my personal inbox, so if you have any questions whatsoever, just respond to this email. I’ll see it and always get back to you.

All the best,

H