'If you love somebody, set them free,' advised Sting back in 1985. Little did he know he was setting out a core principle of leadership for the 21st century.

It's the big idea behind award-winning author Helen Beedham's second book People Glue: Hold on to your best people by setting them free, which leans into that paradox with rather more by way of helpful detail than the Police front man ever provided. Through rigorous research and conversations with top CEOs she has identified four key freedoms that top talent most values, and also the anti-freedom forces that most frequently prompt them to walk out of the organizational door.

We also talk about what it means to write a second book – why WOULD you put yourself through that again? And what might you do differently second time around?

'We don't understand much about hope, and yet people are crying out for it from leaders.'

If you ever hear someone dismissively say 'hope is not a strategy', be sure to introduce them to Ian Pettigrew, author of Hope is a Strategy. He will disabuse them of the idea that hope is simply wishful thinking and introduce them to a more muscular, active concept: hope that can be – MUST be – wielded with rigour and realism.

In Ian's book (quite literally), hope isn't rainbows and unicorns; if it is, you don't get away with that twice. Neither is it about ignoring reality until something good happens. Strategic hope is gritty and demanding, but it's also the most powerful force in the world for both personal and organizational transformation.

We also talk about the practicalities of applying this theory of hope to the business of writing a book, both the inner game and the getting of the words onto the page. So if you're feeling a bit hopeless about your own project, this is for you.

'O nce you know that you can't do it all, it becomes a little bit easier.'

Why do so many of us feel like we're drowning in endless demands and to-do lists, at work and at home? Why, when we have so many smart productivity tools, is it so damn hard to get the important things done?

If you relate, I'd like to introduce you to Chris Lovett. Because HE can introduce you to the genius idea of 'strategic laziness', and also explain how an author with no time can write a book perfectly designed to be read by people with no time.

If you're looking for the antidote to hustle culture, if you're ready to face the fact that you will NEVER get to the bottom of your to-do list and if you fancy embracing tiny acts of rebellion to stem the relentlessness, this is for you.

'The crux of our whole business is just really finding talented people to help others do what they can't do themselves as well.'

Kevin Anderson never planned to become CEO of one of the biggest editorial agencies in the world, but that's where his knack for seeing opportunities in a fast-changing industry together with the guts to take them has landed him.

In this episode, we talk about how publishing professionals can support authors at every stage – from clarifying the concept through writing the manuscript to securing the right deal (and we note that 'the right deal' means different things to different authors.)

From the impact of AI on writing and piracy to top tips for writing business books, the enduring appeal of long-form nonfiction to the plethora of publishing options open to authors today, it's packed with insights and advice for aspiring authors.

Don't wait until you've written your manuscript to listen to this!

"Love feedback, hate feedback, feel sort of somewhere in the middle, it still creates this sense of anxiety for everyone around."

Organizational psychologist Becky Westwood is an expert in social anxiety at work. And that gives her a unique persepctive on the situation guaranteed to created anxiety in ALL of us: giving and receiving feedback.

In her book Can I Offer You Something? Expert Ways to Overcome the Horrors of Organizational Feedback, she invites us to reject the grim reality of most workplace feedback processes and return to the original sense of the word: nourishment. It's refreshingly human, and might just save you some lost sleep, not to mention relationships.

This book was named Short Business Book of the Year, and we talk about what length is the right length for a book, and how the answers come as you write, not before you start.

So start.

"We need to think carefully about whether it's going to be the kind of pressure that creates energy and joy and diamond-style transformation, or the sort that sucks the air out of the room and makes things buckle and break."

Pressure is the new normal - in life, at work, in leadership, and also in writing. Other people put pressure on us, we put pressure on ourselves, we put pressure on other people...

This Best Bits episode explores how we deal with that, and also whether it's possible to use it well, and to find some joy in it. (Spoiler alert: it is.)

Hear from:

• Henry King on becoming 'change native'
• David Sinkinson on how to enjoy pressure in the moment
• George Walkley on turning negative feedback into fuel for progress
• Dominic Colenso on the transformative power of career meltdown
• John Amaechi on curating your own power and the discipline of writing
• Zoe Arden on the pressure to do justice to others in your writing
• Catherine Xiang on the pressures you don't even know are there.

Pressure is inevitable, how we respond is down to us.

'We don't understand much about hope, and yet people are crying out for it from leaders.'

If you ever hear someone dismissively say 'hope is not a strategy', be sure to introduce them to Ian Pettigrew. He will disabuse them of the idea that hope is simply wishful thinking and introduce them to a more muscular, active concept: hope that can be - MUST be - wielded with rigour and realism.

In Ian's book (quite literally), hope isn't rainbows and unicorns; if it is, you don't get away with that twice. Neither is it about ignoring reality until something good happens. Strategic hope is gritty and demanding, but it's also the most powerful force in the world for both personal and organizational transformation.

We also talk about the practicalities of applying this theory of hope to the business of writing a book, both the inner game and the practicalities of getting the words on the page. So if you're feeling a bit hopeless about your own project, this is for you.

' An author might be thinking, I can't wait till the book is out on a bookshelf... I would suggest focus on the experience of the writing and the pleasure of actually writing the book and the satisfaction you're going to get in doing that.'

David Sinkinson, SaaS entrepreneur, podcaster, and co-author of Startup Different (all of this done in partnership with his brother, Chris) is a big fan of business books. On long commute after long commute they taught him pretty much everything he needed to know to start and succeed with his own business, and one of the reasons he wrote his own book was a desire to pay that back.

One of the ways he does that is by rejecting the easy myths: he's open about the doubt, the missteps and the WFIO moments (you'll have to listen) along the way, and along with the practical wisdom addresses the emotional weight of building a business, what he describes as 'baked-in empathy'.

Having read a lot of business books is a great start when you're writing a business book, but nothing is ever going to make this easy. David has some great advice for anyone taking the job on (especially in partnership with a fellow author), and draws out the parallel with entrepreneurship: it's hard, you're constantly doubting yourself, but if you can let yourself appreciate the process while you're in it rather than obsessing about the outcome, you might just find it's one of the most grittily joyful experiences of your life.

'I think that flow is quite important. It's almost like a cultural logic.'

Intercultural communication is always complex, but for Western leaders seeking to build relationships as a way in to the mighty Chinese market, it's particularly tricky. From seating plans to changing job titles to how to ask for a solution to a problem, there are very different assumptions and unspoken rules. Which is why Catherine Xiang, UK Director for LSE's Confucius Institute for Business, wrote Bridging the Gap: An introduction to intercultural communication with China, named Specialist Business Book of the Year.

It's tricky enough when everyone is speaking English, but if you're learning Mandarin, it gets even trickier: get the stress on a word wrong and you could easily proposition someone by mistake!

For writers with an eye to the global market, there's a deeper significance too: not only language and metaphor but even the way the book opens or an argument is structured can embody a particular cultural bias. Practical strategies and a thoughtful perspective on how to build genuine, effective cross-cultural relationships, at the meeting table and on the page.

'Our businesses have been designed for us by us, for humans by humans, and that's what the big change is now.'

What's the real promise and transformative power of AI in business? In their new book Autonomous: Why the fittest businesses embrace AI-first strategies in digital labor, Henry King and his co-author Vala Afshar make the case that organizational design will be transformed by agentic AI, with intelligent agents and humans collaborating seamlessly.

It's an empowering vision: just as autonomous vehicles will democratize and expand humans' ability to move around, they argue that AI can augment and democratize our creativity and effectiveness.

And Henry talks me through their ecosystem of iterative idea development, including the use of AI to challenge and expand those ideas, and offers super-practical advice for other writers in this space.

If you're here for the intersection of cutting-edge technology, business strategy, the future of work and writing, this episode is very much here for you.