Beyond Leading

with Alec Pearson and Jude Jennison.

What does a horse know about leadership? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Jude Jennison works with senior leaders and executive teams using a herd of horses to expose something that's much harder to see in the meeting room: our default patterns of behaviour.

A horse doesn't care about your job title, experience or intentions. It responds to what you're actually communicating: your confidence, clarity, energy, emotions and behaviour. And when it doesn't want to follow you, the feedback is immediate. There is no carefully worded performance review. The horse simply says no..

In this episode of Beyond Leading, Alec talks with Jude about what happens when experienced leaders are taken outside their comfort zone and can no longer rely on the behaviours that have always worked for them.

They explore:

• why horses reveal leadership blind spots so quickly
• what control, self-doubt and lack of clarity look like under pressure
• why stronger relationships don't mean avoiding challenge or conflict
• what happens when teams work harder but aren't genuinely aligned
• why effective leadership starts with paying attention to yourself and the people around you

Jude also shares some remarkable examples from her work, including an exhausted leadership team whose fatigue was exposed when the horses simply lay down.

Ultimately, this is a conversation about what horses can reveal that the boardroom often cannot: the hidden patterns, blind spots and behaviours that shape how we really lead.

Jude Jennison is the Founder of Leaders by Nature. A former IBM leader, she has developed more than 5,000 leaders, written three books and works with organisations to change how leaders and teams behave under pressure, uncertainty and change.

Find out more about Jude and Leaders by Nature:

• Website: https://www.leadersbynature.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/judejennison/

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with Alec Pearson and Claire Ryan.

A business can be successful and still reach a point where the way it has always worked is no longer enough.

The systems may be creaking. Too much may still depend on the owner. Different parts of the business may be working in isolation. And now AI is adding another layer of pressure — and another set of decisions.

So how do you know when the business needs to change? And how do you avoid reaching for new technology before you really understand the problem you are trying to solve?

In this episode Alec Pearson is joined by Claire Ryan, a business transformation specialist who works with successful business owners at exactly this kind of turning point.

Claire helps businesses step back, look at how they are really operating, and work out what needs to change if they are going to remain relevant, competitive and ready for what comes next.

In this episode:

• Why successful businesses can outgrow the systems, processes and ways of working that got them this far.
• What AI is exposing about technology, data, governance and decision-making inside organisations.
• The leadership challenge of changing a business when people, including sometimes the founder or MD, may not be ready to move.

This is a conversation about business transformation, but also about judgement. About knowing when something that once worked no longer does. And about recognising when the next stage of growth requires more than simply doing more of the same.

To connect with Claire Ryan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claire-ryan-mba/

Email: [email protected]

Follow Beyond Leading on LinkedIn for episode clips and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-leading-podcast

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with Alec Pearson.

What happens when everyone follows the process, does exactly what they are supposed to do, and the problem still isn’t solved?

That is where ownership gets interesting.

In this episode Alec Pearson explores what happens when responsibility is spread across teams, functions and organisations, but nobody is truly accountable for the outcome.

A recent experience with a serious mechanical failure brought the issue into sharp focus. Everyone involved appeared to have a role. Everyone had a process. Everyone could explain what they had done.

And yet one question remained: Who actually owned the outcome?

It is a pattern that appears inside many organisations more often than we might like to admit. Problems are handed over, escalated, logged and passed on. Everyone can point to their part of the process.

But the problem itself can remain unresolved.

In this episode, I explore:

• The difference between responsibility and genuine accountability
• Why following the process is not the same as owning the outcome
• When judgement and leadership need to take over from process
• What leaders should ask about ownership across their organisation

Because organisations can become very good at processing problems.

The real test of leadership is what happens when somebody recognises that the process is no longer enough.

And if everybody owns a piece of the process, there is always a risk that nobody owns the problem.

Follow Beyond Leading on LinkedIn for episode clips and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-leading-podcast

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with Alec Pearson.

What happens when everyone around the leadership table has a perfectly reasonable case and the business still can’t move?

Sales wants growth. Finance wants to protect cash. Operations is already stretched. HR is looking at capability. Risk wants stronger controls.

Nobody is obviously wrong, but that is precisely the problem.

Alec explores one of the harder realities of senior leadership: the decisions where there is no clean answer, no obvious villain and no neat framework to hide behind.

As planning season begins, the challenge is not always deciding what matters.

Sometimes it is deciding what matters more.

In this episode:

• Why good leadership teams can still get stuck even when everyone around the table has a reasonable case
• What changes when senior leaders stop defending their function and start thinking about the whole enterprise
• Why some of the hardest leadership decisions are not between right and wrong, but between competing versions of right

If your leadership team is busy, capable and working hard, but the organisation still feels harder to move than it should, this episode is worth your time.

Follow Beyond Leading on LinkedIn for episode clips and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-leading-podcast

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with Alec Pearson, Joseph McGuire.

Joseph McGuire has spent a career learning to read people — three decades as a therapist before moving into executive communication, behavioural profiling and leadership development. Through his company, Clearsight Communications, he now helps leaders understand human behaviour, build trust, and hear what's really being said.

We tend to think communication is about how well we speak. Joseph thinks it's the other way round. The leaders who truly understand a room usually aren't the ones doing the talking — they're the ones who can hear what isn't being said.

In this episode, Alec Pearson sits down with Joseph to explore listening as a leadership skill almost nobody is actually taught. Not the "active listening" box-tick — but hearing tone, hesitation, the gaps, and everything a person's body says while their words say something else. As Joseph puts it, communication begins before a word is spoken. For senior leaders, and anyone building toward that seat, it may be the most underrated skill you own.

In this conversation:

• Why the higher you rise, the more your listening can quietly slip
• The one simple question that pulled a struggling company back from the brink
• What an ancient way of reading people reveals about the skill we keep getting wrong
• Why the sharpest leaders treat a hire almost like an interrogation — and the failure rate that proves the point
• How to catch the exact moment someone's words and their body stop agreeing
• The kind of presence that commands a room without ever raising a voice

If you've ever walked out of a conversation certain you missed something, this one's for you.

You can connect with Joseph McGuire and Clearsight Communications on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-mcguire-face-facts/

Follow Beyond Leading on LinkedIn for episode clips and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-leading-podcast

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with Alec Pearson and Dr Calvin Lightbody.

In Part 1, Alec and Calvin took apart the comfortable version of wellbeing - the fruit bowls, the tick-box initiatives - and named the warning signs leaders are so good at driving past.

This time it gets personal. Because there's a harder question sitting underneath all of it: what's really happening to the high achiever who keeps pushing long after the tank is empty?

When we feel stuck, the instinct is to work harder. Calvin has watched where that leads - in senior clinicians, in managers, in himself.

There's a concept from healthcare that explains it better than any wellbeing survey ever could: the slow, repeated wear that cracks even the strongest people, one small pressure at a time, until something gives. It has a name most leaders have never heard, and once you understand it, you start seeing it everywhere. Including in yourself.

We explore:

• When you feel stuck, why is working harder so often the wrong move, and what's really hiding underneath it?
• What quietly gets worse the higher you climb, not better, and why does no one at the top talk about it?
• There's a kind of damage that builds up one small knock at a time. What is it, and why isn't it just a healthcare problem?
• If you've recognised yourself in any of this, what's the one thing to do tomorrow morning?

If you've been holding it together for longer than you'd care to admit, this one is worth your time.

To submit an anonymous question for discussion in part 3, visit: Beyond Leading: Ask Calvin & Alec – Fill in form

Follow Beyond Leading on LinkedIn for episode clips and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-leading-podcast

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with Alec Pearson and Dr Calvin Lightbody.

Every organisation says it takes wellbeing seriously. The fruit bowl, the yoga session, the mindfulness app someone signed everyone up to. And yet the people carrying the most keep quietly running on empty. Not because the perks aren't pleasant, but because almost none of it touches the thing that's actually wearing them down.

What if most of what your organisation calls wellbeing isn't wellbeing at all? There's a difference between wellness and wellbeing that most leaders have never stopped to notice, and once you see it, you can't unsee how much of the well-meaning stuff misses the point.

Calvin has watched it play out on the front line of an emergency department, and what he's learned there lands in every high-stakes workplace. Including yours.

We explore:

• What's the difference between wellness and wellbeing, and why does mixing them up cost you more than you think?
• Could your wellbeing initiatives actually be making things worse rather than better?
• Why do the strongest, most capable people so often drive straight past their own warning signs?
• What's the one question Calvin believes every leader should ask themselves on Monday morning, that almost none of them do?

If you lead people, and you care whether they thrive or just survive, this one is worth your time.

Follow Beyond Leading on LinkedIn for episode clips and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-leading-podcast

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with Alec Pearson.

After 19 honest conversations with leaders, founders and coaches working in very different worlds, the same themes kept appearing.

Questions about identity, energy, trust, change and what really happens when leadership becomes personal.

Why do some leaders know exactly what needs to change, yet still do nothing about it?

And what are the questions that leadership keeps asking, regardless of role, sector or experience?

In this 20th episode, Alec Pearson looks back across the first six months of Beyond Leading to explore the recurring themes that have shaped the podcast so far, what those conversations have reinforced for him personally, and why knowing what to do is rarely the same as being ready to do it.

We explore:

• Why does leadership become more personal the further up you go?
• What happens when reflection is constantly squeezed out by the diary?
• Why can knowing the right thing still fail to change our behaviour?
• How do energy, trust and self-awareness affect the way we lead?
• What have 19 very different conversations revealed about the reality of leadership?

If you lead people, carry responsibility or find yourself knowing what needs to change but still not acting on it, this episode is worth your time.

Follow Beyond Leading on LinkedIn for episode clips and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-leading-podcast

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with Alec Pearson, Tiffany David and Graham Da Costa

Change is no longer a one-off event, it's the constant backdrop of working life. New technology, shifting client expectations, the rise of AI. And yet most change programmes still fail. Not because the strategy was wrong, but because of something far more human.

What if the real problem is that your people don't think there's a problem at all? You can't sell a solution to someone who doesn't believe anything is broken, and that one insight, borrowed from the world of addiction psychology, might explain more failed change programmes than any strategy document ever will.

We explore:

• Why do so many change programmes fail before they've even started?
• What's the one question Graham put to leaders that stopped most of them in their tracks?
• When your team asks "what's in it for me?" - do you actually have an answer?
• Could your people already be ready for more change than you think?

If you lead a team through change, and every leader does, this one is worth your time.

Follow Beyond Leading on LinkedIn for episode clips and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-leading-podcast

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with Nick Sellers, Tiffany Barnard and Ellen Putz.

In this episode of Beyond Leading, Nick Sellers takes the host's chair and is joined by Tiffany Barnard and Ellen Putz.

The topic: team leadership.

And the conversation goes a lot further than the textbook version.

Because the way teams are led has changed. The old hierarchical, fear-based, command-and-control playbook is being replaced by something very different, and not every leader is keeping up.

We explore:

• what really sits at the heart of every effective team, and what most leaders still get wrong
• the line between leading and managing, and why it matters more than people think
• the trap most people fall into when they go from doer to leader
• why people don't leave bad jobs, they leave bad leaders

If you lead a team, or you want to, this is a conversation worth sitting with.

Follow Beyond Leading on LinkedIn for episode clips and updates: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beyond-leading-podcast

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