What if the "problem person" on your team is actually a symptom, not the cause?

Chartered Occupational and Coaching Psychologist Nicole Williams (founder of Nicole Williams Organisational Psychology) joins John to unpack what really drives toxic team cultures, and what leaders can do about it.

You'll learn:

• Why psychological safety is the foundation every team needs, and what happens when it's missing
• How the challenge and support balance makes or breaks a leader
• The difference between a tight-knit team and a damaging clique
• How to use personality profiling and structured interviews to hire better as you scale

#TeamCulture #PsychologicalSafety #Leadership #HiringStrategy #B2BSaaS #OrganisationalPsychology

How do you build and keep a great team when you can’t compete on salary — and what is AI really doing to creative careers?

Anna Ganley (Chief Executive, The Society of Authors) joined as a temp on reception and rose to lead the union representing over 12,500 writers, illustrators and translators. She shares how flexibility, training and honest career conversations hold a team together, and offers a clear-eyed take on generative AI, copyright, and protecting the creative workforce.

You’ll learn:

• How to win talent when you can’t pay top of market

• Why honest career conversations keep people (or help them leave well)

• What AI really means for creative careers — and how to respond responsibly

#TeamBuilding #NotForProfit #PeopleFirst #AIandWork #Leadership #Recruitment

Something breaks in your business. How long before someone writes a job spec?

For most teams, about three weeks. Michael Ruiter, interim CEO and transformation consultant, thinks that's the wrong move almost every time.

In this episode he breaks down how to hire for the need, not the gap:

• The questions to ask before you write a single job description
• Why your current need and your future need are often two different jobs
• Why experience doesn't predict on-the-job success

#Hiring #InterimLeadership #Recruitment #TeamBuilding #Transformation

When you inherit a team you did not build, where do you actually start?

Jenny Jarvis (COO, Energy Saving Trust and author of Lead With Confidence) shares how she walks into established teams and reshapes them through transformation: diagnosing the organisation before judging the people, and starting with the work rather than the org chart.

You’ll learn:

• How to prepare before day one and test your assumptions instead of acting on them

• Why most we need a new hire decisions are really structure problems in disguise

• How to redeploy the talent you already have before replacing it

#TransformationalLeadership #TeamBuilding #LeadershipStyle #HiringStrategy #WomenInLeadership

How do you build a recruitment process that genuinely tests for values, in a 50-person organisation operating in 120 countries?

Sarah Mukherjee MBE (CEO, IEMA, former BBC Environment Correspondent) shares the practical operating model behind a small, global, values-driven team: human-read applications, peer interviewers, a welcome letter at the front of every job description, and why ‘soft skills’ should be renamed professional skills.

You’ll learn:

• How to test for values without relying on rehearsed answers
• Why every application is worth a human read
• What the ‘welcome letter’ front-page does to your applicant pool
• Why ‘professional skills’ is a better, fairer name for the things that actually make business work

#ValuesDrivenHiring #ProfessionalSkills #HumanInTheLoop #JobDescriptions #PeopleAndCulture #NotForProfit #Sustainability #TeamBuilding

What if scrapping probationary periods was the most powerful trust signal you could send a new hire?

Ken Mackness (CEO, membership, charity, private and local authority sectors) makes the case for hiring on values, trusting from day one, and building boards that challenge rather than echo. Plus, why most recruitment failures are the company’s fault, not the candidate’s.

You’ll learn:

• Why values and transferable traits beat technical experience
• How to use trust as the operating principle of a team
• Why scrapping probationary periods can lift performance from day one
• What separates a culture fit board from a culture add one

#Hiring #Leadership #Trust #Probation #CultureAdd #Membership #NotForProfit #TeamBuilding

Why do so many employers say they want young talent, then build processes that quietly filter young people out?

John Yarham (CEO, The Careers & Enterprise Company) shares 25+ years of practical insight into what genuinely works: essential skills over soft skills, reimagined work experience, the apprenticeship opportunity most employers miss, and the three Cs that decide whether early talent succeeds.

You’ll learn:

• Why ‘soft skills’ should be called essential skills
• What reimagined work experience looks like, and why SMEs can run it
• Why ‘recruit from the left’ wins for most UK businesses
• The three Cs that decide whether early talent thrives or stalls

#EarlyTalent #Apprenticeships #WorkExperience #EssentialSkills #Hiring #Education #YoungPeople #TeamBuilding

Links discussed

• Measure your early careers outreach with CEC’s free 25-minute assessment here: https://employer.careersandenterprise.co.uk/#/registration
• Find your local careers hub: https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/careers-hubs/contact-your-local-careers-hub
• The new Skills England skills classification tool is here: https://skillsclassification.org/

If you hire the right person, you're 70% of the way there. The rest is process.

Frances Ingham (Head of Sales Development EMEA, Vimeo) breaks down why "will to succeed" matters more than skill, why most modern SDR teams are over-reliant on automation, and where to find SDR talent that nobody else is looking at.

You'll learn:

• How to spot the will to succeed in an interview
• Why graduate academies and non-traditional talent pools outperform second jobbers
• How to turn an underperforming SDR around (and when you can't)

#SalesDevelopment #SDRHiring #SaaS #CommercialLeadership #TeamBuilding

Caroline Oxley (Chief People Officer, Evolve) walked into a business spending £208,000 a year on agencies and reduced it to £38,000 in 12 months, whilst the team grew by almost 50% and Evolve was ranked #15 in the Best Companies Technology Sector list.

You'll learn:

• How to build an internal recruitment function hiring managers actually want to use
• Why managers unconsciously recruit in their own image, and what that costs you
• Why "subject matter expert" recruiters are often overrated
• Where AI genuinely helps in hiring, and where it makes a bad situation worse

#InternalRecruitment #PeopleAndCulture #HRStrategy #RecruitmentCost #AIInHiring #TeamBuilding

How do you hire when you don't trust job specs and don't believe in CVs?

Mike Winnett (Co-Founder, G&G Studios) built and sold a business for £8 million and admits he sold it too soon because he'd never built the team that should have been running it. He's hired differently ever since. In this episode, Mike shares the character-archetype hiring framework he uses now, why he finds his best hires through their LinkedIn writing rather than their CV, and what most founders quietly cost themselves by being too busy to build the team.

You'll learn:

• How to hire by character archetype rather than job title

• Why approaching candidates through their writing beats waiting for applications

• The difference between hires that protect your business and hires that elevate it

• Why most founders are the cap on their own business's growth

#FounderHiring #ScalingTeams #EmployerBrand #StartupGrowth #TeamBuilding