Teams That Swear

Ex-sniper Brett Pennell on training, expectations, and the moments teams remember.

In the latest Teams That Swear episode, I sat down with Brett Pennell, former NSW Police Tactical Operations sniper, to talk about what pressure does to people and teams. Brett has spent more than 20 years in policing, including specialist roles where information is incomplete, time compresses, and decisions cannot be passed up the chain or softened by committee.

If you lead people, you have seen this play out. Something goes wrong, the room tightens, and someone says, “We just need people to step up.” Brett’s experience pushes leaders toward a different question: what have we actually built here, and what will we become when pressure arrives?

In the episode, we unpack four lessons leaders can use immediately:

1. Pressure is never an individual experience, even when one person makes the call.
2. When it matters most, people default to training and habit, not intention.
3. The real cost of pressure often shows up after the event, especially when people carry it in silence.
4. Pressure accelerates trust in teams that depend on each other, while corporate teams have to design trust deliberately.

This is the kind of thinking that helps teams swear by each other, not about each other, because it shifts the focus from blaming individuals to strengthening how the team functions when it counts.Trigger warning: the episode references the Bondi tragedy and includes discussion of police response, firearms, and loss of life. If that feels heavy or activating right now, you may want to pause and return to it later.

If you lead a senior team, you’ll know this moment. You come back into the year or hit a pressure point mid-stream, and something feels off. People are busy but not connected. Priorities feel fuzzy. Conversations take more effort than theyshould. And everyone quietly hopes things will magically settle.

They won’t. Senior teams don’t reset by accident. They reset by design.

In this episode I break down:

• Why most kickoff and strategy days feel good but change almost nothing
• The four moves that shift a senior team from misaligned to connected
• How to reset relationships before you reset priorities
• The simple way to make hidden work visible so people stop stepping on each other
• The conversation almost every senior team avoids and why it shapes everything
• Why rhythm beats inspiration, and how great teams keep clarity alive
• The difference between a “meeting cycle” and a real leadership rhythm
• The baseball version of senior leadership that always gets a laugh, but also lands the point

If you want your team to swear by each other, not about each other, this one matters.

A performance psychologist reveals why experienced teams stop improving and what helps them adapt.

Capable teams don’t stall because people stop caring or trying.

More often, they stall because the way the work is set up no longer helps people learn or adapt.

In the second part of my discussion with Jeff Simons on Teams That Swear, a performance scientist who has spent decades in elite sport and high-pressure environments, to unpack what leaders can actually change when effort is already there but progress is not.

We get into:

• Why shaping conditions matters more than explaining harder
• How protecting people from failure can quietly slow learning
• Why constraints change behaviour faster than instructions
• And why rhythm and recovery are part of performance, not a nice-to-have

If you lead a senior team that should be further along than it is, this conversation will give you clearer places to intervene without pushing harder.

This is the kind of thinking that helps teams swear by each other, not about each other, because it shifts the focus from fixing people to designing the environment they work in.

The start of the year is meant to feel fresh. But if you’re a senior leader, January often feels like you’re driving two speeds at once. Half your team is still away, the work is piling up, and the pressure from above is already building.

In this episode, I unpack why so many leaders hit February already worn down, and what the smartest leaders do differently in the first thirty days.

You’ll walk away with practical moves you can use right now, including how to:

• Set clarity early so you’re not dragged into reactive work
• Reset your leadership layers without long meetings
• Protect your team from false urgency
• Filter the noise so February is easier to lead

If you want a cleaner start to the year, this one will help you steady the rhythm before the pace picks up.

If you lead a team, this is the podcast your people wish you’d listen to. Follow now for real stories from leaders around the world you can’t get on Wikipedia, and tools that actually help teams work better.

If you’ve ever walked out of a team meeting feeling clear and confident your team is on board, only to find yourself having the same conversation again three months later, this episode of Teams That Swear will feel uncomfortably familiar.

In Part One of a two-part conversation on the Teams That Swear podcast, I sat down with Jeff Simons, an applied performance scientist and kinesiology professor whose work focuses on how humans actually learn and develop skill in elite sport and high-performance environments. Jeff understands a little about performance. He’s worked closely with gold medallist performers at various Olympics, including track and field, rowing and taekwando.

Jeff challenges a common leadership assumption. That learning is something you deliver through explanation, clarity, or repetition. His work shows learning doesn’t work that way.

In Part One, we unpack:

• Why explanation is not evidence of learning a new behaviour
• Why agreement in the room often misleads leaders

• Why people can’t be built piece by piece like LEGO
• What leaders really influence when learning does occur

It’s a grounded conversation about why so many well-intended leadership development efforts stall, and what to pay attention to instead if you want progress that lasts.

If you lead a team, are an educator or coach, and feel like you’re explaining the same things again and again, this one is worth your time.

If every decision, approval and escalation still flows through you, even though your team is smart, capable and experienced, this episode is for you.

In my latest Teams That Swear podcast, I unpack what happens when leaders let go the right way, drawing on David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around. Marquet transformed the worst-performing submarine in the US Navy into the best bythrowing out command-and-control and teaching his people to take ownership.

Listen in and you’ll walk away with:

•  Simple language shifts that turn compliance into ownership.
• A method to hand over control without losing confidence in the outcome.
• A clear way to build decision-makers, not just task-doers.
• Tools to cut red tape so your team can move faster without you in every loop.
• Practical ways to create psychological safety so your people actually challenge you (before it’s too late)

If you’re ready to reclaim time, sharpen your focus, and see your team step up in ways you didn’t think possible, this episode will show you how.

If you think leadership means speaking first, staying tough, and being the expert in your area, this Teams That Swear episode, featuring Lucy Liu’s head chef Jenna North, might challenge that.

In our latest conversation with non-corporate leaders, I sat down with the Head Chef of one of Melbourne’s busiest kitchens.

She leads a team of 20+ chefs, taking a non-Gordon Ramsay approach to cursing, without posturing, and without losing her presence when the pressure’s on.

Instead of leading from the front, she leads from the middle.

We unpacked:

• Why staying calm matters more than you think (“If I lose it, then everyone else loses it.”)
• How she built trust in her early days as head of the kitchen without being the expert (“I didn’t know you could cook” suggested one of her staff after she was in the job for a few weeks).
• Why confidence doesn’t have to be loud
• And why listening might be your most underrated leadership skill

It’s about the kind of leadership that keeps people grounded when pressure is high, pace is relentless, and trust is everything.

Whether you’re leading 20 chefs or a 200-person exec team, Jenna’s calm conviction offers something rare: a reminder that presence isn’t passive. It’s what holds the team together when the heat is on.

You might not have caused the dysfunction, but you're responsible for shifting it. Your team reflects what you allow, what you reinforce, and what you let slide.

If your leadership team feels a little off, if there are too many side conversations in chats or in the meeting after the meeting, or the conversations that need to be had aren’t happening… this episode might be exactly what you need.

It's short, sharp and it might make you uncomfortable. And that’s the point. Because if your team dynamics are off, it's not just about your team. It’s also about you.

Before you scroll past, hear me out.

Leadership doesn’t start with another vision statement or a feel-good quote. It starts in the tough moments, when you decide to lead differently.

In this episode, I share:

• What doesn’t work when you're trying to fix team dynamics
• A story from a senior leader who modelled real leadership in just one sentence
• Four practical ways to reset how your team works together

No theatre. No silver bullets. Just the truth about what it takes to turn things around, and where to start.

Listen to the episode now. Use it to start a better conversation with your team.

What leaders can learn when you or your teams aren’t at their best.

Cirque du Soleil head coach Lee McDermott has rebuilt more than high-performing teams,  he’s rebuilt himself.

He’s won gold medals, led global performers at Cirque du Soleil, and knows what it’s like to be stuck between what’s expected and what you actually have the energy to give.

When he took over a team at Cirque that had stopped talking to each other, he didn’t rush in with strategy. He played music. Broke the group into small circles. Gave them space to feel again.

And when his own energy dropped? He listened. To his wife, to his body, to people who knew him best, and he acted on it.

If you’ve ever felt the pressure to perform when your team’s disconnected or your tank’s half-full, this episode’s for you.

Ever had a moment that completely changed how you lead?
In this episode of Teams That Swear, I share two of mine.

One came from a trip to Cameroon.
The other? A piece of brutal feedback I never saw coming.Here’s what I unpack:

• Why discomfort is often the best teacher
• What leading in Cameroon taught me about perspective
• The difference between feedback that helps and feedback that hurts
• Why some leadership teams feel stuck and how to shift that
• How one CEO stopped carrying the whole team and got them to carry each other

These moments shaped who I am and how I lead.
They reminded me that if you're not grounded, you'll get pulled into everything that isn’t.