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A client missed his team’s Christmas party because a client flew him to Europe for consulting work. When he got back, people asked questions. Direct ones. Who paid for it? Did you fly first or business? Was it leave? He answered plainly. The client paid. Economy. He used the special leave category for that kind of work. A few weeks earlier, several staff had planned to attend a conference. Then funding changed. Budgets tightened. Unless people paid for it themselves, they couldn’t go. None did. Only the two most senior people went—him and his direct report. They were presenting. They were attending in their formal roles. They were fully funded. We talked about what was happening underneath both incidents. I used the phrase: envy of the troops. He stopped. Yes. That’s exactly it. He hadn’t thought of it in those terms before, but the recognition was instant. Where envy shows up This is one of the places envy appears in organisations. Not as wanting a plane seat, but as a response to difference made visible. Who gets to go. Who gets funded. Who is representing the work elsewhere while others stay behind. Hierarchies give some people access that others don’t

There’s a moment in leadership that rarely gets named. You appoint someone capable. They raise the standard. They do the job well. And instead of momentum, things start to slow. Information stops flowing cleanly. Decisions get second-guessed. Small obstacles appear where none existed before. Nothing is overt. Nothing you can point to easily. And yet, something is clearly off. If you’ve led long enough, you’ll recognise this situation. Not as confusion exactly, but as the discomfort of having to work out what’s actually happening. When capability creates friction In Australia, this is sometimes described as white anting. But the behaviour isn’t always that deliberate, or that malicious. Often, what you’re dealing with is not poor performance, but resistance to change. A capable person can represent a shift someone didn’t choose. A new way of working. A higher bar. A loss of informal influence. When that happens, resistance doesn’t usually show up as open refusal. It shows up sideways. Delays. Withholding. “Helpful” commentary that undermines. Requests for reassurance that never quite resolve. As a leader, you’re left holding an uncomfortable question. Is this a capability issue, a conduct issue, or something else entirely? The judgement leaders have to make This is

This week, I’m doing something different. Over the past year, I’ve been conducting independent research into what helps senior leaders lead well and stay effective under pressure. From that work, I’ve built something new — the Senior Leader Assessment — and I’d love you to try it. Why I did it Even strong operators can’t read the label from inside the jam jar. The research revealed six recurring situations senior leaders commonly navigate — things like board relationships, talent gaps and loneliness at the top. This assessment gives you an external read on your situation and the moves that have been found to work. Five minutes now saves you wondering. What you get Seven questions. Five minutes. Instant results. You’ll receive a short summary of your current reality, what’s supporting you, what’s not and some practical next steps. Click here to take the Senior Leader Assessment. You’ll get a clear view, fresh insight and a real perspective. Image by Pexels from Pixabay

  My client stares at me. Her boss has told her to focus on building culture in her team. She has no idea where to start. “What does that even mean?” she asks. “My people are already drowning.” Her world runs on reactivity. Things happen on the daily. Incidents, breakdowns, emergencies. Plans change constantly. The workload is relentless. And her team is already stretched beyond what’s reasonable. She feels like a mother hen. She wants to protect them, not pile on more demands. But the pressure to do something is real. She and her boss used to work well together. Then her boss got a new boss, and everything changed. Now her boss only wants solutions. And she couldn’t see one. She’s felt abandoned and on her own. So we start talking about what culture actually means when the work itself is reactive. We’ve been solving the wrong problem Most of us have been taught that good leadership means being proactive. Getting ahead of problems. Planning for the future. Having systems that prevent fires before they start. But what happens when responding to crises is the work? In reactive environments, chasing proactivity creates a corrosive guilt. You feel like you’re

Did you get a chance to review the materials? Sarah (let’s call her that) asked. No, sorry. Crazy week. Just bring me up to speed. Two minutes into the meeting they had requested, and it was already going sideways. Sarah pivoted, condensing her preparation while watching them glance away from the camera. Then their phone appeared on screen. Sorry, this is incredibly rude. They started typing. Mid-presentation. While she was still talking. When there’s no good move Five minutes later: Sorry, this is rude. More typing. Every response felt wrong.Call them out and risk the only opening she had.Stay silent and accept being invisible.Ask them to focus and sound like she was parenting a potential client. At twenty-seven minutes: Send me more details on this they said, already reaching to disconnect. Sarah closed her laptop and felt the frustration land. Sharp, useless, and with nowhere to go. The meeting that actually mattered What saved her was this: she hadn’t relied on a single point of access. The following week, Sarah met with this person’s boss. They hadn’t coordinated it. She’d built that relationship months earlier, quietly and deliberately. This time, the difference was immediate. The person had done the reading.

She’d been an effective senior leader for years. She ran her division well. Delivered consistently. Built strong relationships across the organisation. She was the kind of leader people trusted to get things done. But something was different when she came back from bereavement leave. The work was the same. The people were the same. But the way she related to it all had changed. Where she’d instinctively jump in to help, she now held back. She didn’t feel the same pull to smooth things over or make things easier for others. In fact, she refused to. It worried her. She’d grown up as the good girl who helped. And helping had always been part of how she led. It’s how people knew her and how she knew herself. Or it had been. Losing the instinct felt like losing part of herself. You think you’re caring less I think I’m caring less, she told me. And I don’t know what that says about me. She’d seen people make big changes after a significant loss. She didn’t want hers to be this. Becoming one of those cynical leaders who didn’t care. She was relieved when she realised she still cared about that.

Why leadership development at the top still matters I didn’t expect to be standing in front of more than 200 people last week. At the Australasian College of Health Service Management (ACHSM) Asia–Pacific Health Leadership Congress in Darwin, I presented research on the CEO experience—what attracts, retains, and develops public hospital CEOs. But what made the session land wasn’t the data. It was the CEO standing beside me. She spoke about what keeps her in the role and what’s shaped her as a leader. Three board chairs who invested in her development. A peer network she’d built and maintained over years. These weren’t nice-to-haves. They were why she was still there, still growing, still committed. Her honesty filled the room in a way research findings alone never could. And it raised a question I’ve been thinking about ever since: why is access to what she described so inconsistent? This question goes to the heart of leadership development at the top, where complexity is highest and support is often least structured. Executive development is mostly left to chance The research confirms what many senior leaders already know. The relationships that matter most at the top—developmental board chairs, strong peer networks, executive

SEEK asked me to weigh in on some of the workplace issues I see often in coaching. Why people don’t take holidays. Interview nerves, but for the interviewer not the candidate. Redundancy. Workplace culture. Writing for these pieces showed me something I also see often. We know what helps, we just don’t do it often enough. The thing about holidays that no one talks about Everyone knows you should take time off. But here’s what I see in practice: people book leave, then spend it checking emails “just in case.” Or they take a long weekend and spend Sunday night dreading Monday. That’s not rest. That’s just a different kind of work. Real rest requires disconnection. Not just from your laptop, but from being available. From being the person others reach for when something goes wrong. The benefit isn’t just that you feel better. It’s that you come back clearer. Problems that felt tangled before seem more straightforward. You’re more likely to prioritise well, respond thoughtfully, and stay present in conversations rather than feeling mentally scattered. But this only works if you actually step away. Half-available doesn’t count. If you lead others, modelling disconnection matters. Half-available leaders set the norm for

The invisible erosion Here’s something I’ve never read in a leadership book: pressure doesn’t just test decisions. It can change how an organisation runs. My client saw this happen when her CEO began going directly to her team during preparations for an upcoming funding round. Direct requests. Side conversations. Decisions made without her. It wasn’t constant, but it was enough to make her uneasy. At first, she assumed trust was eroding. The reality was more complicated, and harder to fix. When pressure drives avoidance, not action As the stakes rose, the CEO slipped into patterns that looked like progress but avoided the real work. She bypassed established systems. She held side conversations with team members. She made decisions outside the usual channels. At the same time, she said she’d “lost visibility” on what was happening. The information was there. Dashboards. Project updates. Regular reports. But she wasn’t using them. Instead, she reverted to familiar territory: operational involvement and “silver bullet” hires meant to solve everything. A high-profile industry recruit. A marketing VP brought in mid-stream. Each new hire carried the implicit promise that they would deliver the revenue growth investors expected. This wasn’t about my client’s competence. It was about

Last week I had a fasting blood test. I walked to the new clinic near me. The one far enough to get some decent steps in, but close enough to not be a trek. I’d drunk plenty of water, but I was still really hungry. I had a banana in my bag to eat straight after. My plan to arrive before opening time and be first in the queue worked. I’ve had cancer. I’ve been clear for 15 years now and well. But I hate needles. They remind me of chemo. I have to do breathing exercises, try to relax, wiggle my toes. The nurse was lovely. While she was inputting my details into the computer she said: “while I’m doing this for the man, just relax and imagine being on holidays”. That made me smile. ​ Even better? It didn’t hurt like it sometimes has. I didn’t almost pass out. My veins didn’t collapse, like the last time. Still, blood tests aren’t my favourite thing. But here’s what made it joyful. When it was done, she put the band-aid on as usual. Then she picked up a black sharpie and drew two dots. Eyes? I wondered what she was doing.