The Strategic Leader

How can you build resilience when leadership pressures mount?

Discover four practical ways to stay flexible, manage uncertainty and maintain your effectiveness through challenging times.

Resilience is an essential skill for strategic leaders, but it isn't about being tough, pushing through at all costs or simply bouncing back. It's about developing the flexibility to respond to challenges, adapt to change and potentially emerge stronger as a result.

We explore what resilience really means for leadership effectiveness, drawing on Dr Carol Pemberton's work and the distinction between psychological safety and certainty. We also consider the Yerkes-Dodson law, which helps explain why some pressure can improve performance, while too much can leave us overwhelmed. And we discuss why constantly waiting for things to settle down before taking action can undermine our resilience.

Most importantly, we share four practical ways to strengthen your personal resilience.

Whether you're navigating organisational change, managing competing demands or supporting your team through challenging circumstances, you'll discover how to build the resilience to stay effective, even when certainty isn't possible.

Key points discussed

• Resilience is about flexibility, not toughness.
• Psychological safety matters more than certainty.
• The relationship between stress and performance.
• Four practical components of resilience.
• The importance of recovery.

Key takeaway

Building resilience isn't about becoming impervious to pressure or waiting until everything feels under control. It's about developing the flexibility, support and practical strategies to navigate uncertainty. Focus on what helps you stay upright, keep moving and find solutions so you can not only bounce back from challenges, but potentially bounce forward.

Find out more

Read Gemma’s blog Resilient Leaders Are Learning to Flex

Sign up to Gemma’s monthly newsletter for more Strategic Insights and top tips

Related episodes

You may also find these previous episodes useful:

2.09 How to Manage Stress to Stay More Strategic

1.08 Unlocking the Power of Strategic Self-Care

2.06 Managing Anxiety and Worry at Work

How can you benefit from AI without allowing it to do your critical thinking for you?

Critical thinking is an essential strategic leadership skill, helping you question information, understand problems properly and make well considered judgements rather than accepting polished answers at face value. We discuss why this matters even more as AI becomes part of everyday leadership work, particularly when plausible, professional looking outputs can tempt us to move too quickly towards an answer.

We look at the importance of framing the problem before trying to solve it, and why you need to understand what you are trying to achieve before you can critically evaluate an AI generated response. And how AI can strengthen rather than replace human thinking by acting as a thinking partner, asking challenging questions and helping you organise your own ideas.

And we explore the AI sandwich approach and a couple of insightful concepts - “bot sitting” and “bot shitting”

Key points

• Why critical thinking starts with framing the problem rather than rushing to a solution.
• How polished and plausible AI outputs can make it harder to recognise weak thinking or irrelevant answers.
• How to use AI as a thinking partner that challenges and organises your ideas rather than outsourcing your thinking.
• Why leaders need to verify, understand and confidently stand behind both their own AI assisted work and the work produced by their teams.

Key takeaway

Use AI to support your critical thinking, not replace it. Whatever the finished output looks like, you should understand it well enough to explain it, question it and confidently stand behind it.

Find out more

Read Gemma’s article Critical Thinking in Leadership: Don’t Let AI Do Your Thinking

The episode also refers to the “AI sandwich” approach shared by Kerry Harrison, and more on the concepts of “bot sitting” and “bot shitting” can be found in the Work AI Institute report here

Sign up to Gemma’s monthly newsletter for more Strategic Insights and top tips

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Related episodes

You may also find these previous episodes useful:

6.02 Strategic Clarity

1.02 Crafting a Simple Yet Effective Strategy (audio episode)

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Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Strategic Leader podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, please give us 5 stars! It will help others find the show. Check out our previous episodes and remember to subscribe so you don’t miss our future episodes. If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, we’d love to hear from you:

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How easily can you move beyond your own viewpoint and see a leadership challenge through a completely different lens?

Perspective shifting is an important strategic leadership skill because the more senior you become, the more you need to understand competing priorities, different stakeholders and alternative ways of thinking. We discuss why mental agility helps you move beyond the tunnel vision of your own role, department or preferences, without losing your own point of view.

We look at practical ways to develop this skill, including Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and the Disney Creative Method, which uses the perspectives of dreamer, realist and critic. We consider how deliberately adopting different thinking positions can improve decision making, creativity, conflict management and the quality of strategic conversations.

We also explore how perspective shifting can strengthen strategy development and stakeholder management. By asking what employees, customers, finance teams, communities or other stakeholders would think, you can anticipate questions and identify gaps in your thinking. Finally, we consider how the same technique can help you challenge your inner critic, access different viewpoints and become a more agile and effective leader.

Key points discussed

• Why perspective shifting becomes increasingly important as you move into senior and strategic leadership roles.
• How to distinguish intellectual perspective shifting from emotional empathy.
• How Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats can help you deliberately adopt different thinking perspectives.
• How the Disney Creative Method separates the dreamer, realist and critic perspectives to develop and stress test ideas.
• Why clear rules of engagement can make structured perspective shifting more effective in meetings and workshops.
• How stepping into the shoes of different stakeholders can strengthen strategy, proposals and leadership decisions.
• How questions such as “What would future me say?” or “What advice would I give someone in my team?” can help you access a different perspective.
• Why curiosity, self awareness and a willingness to challenge your preferred viewpoint are essential for developing greater mental agility.

Key takeaway

Perspective shifting is a leadership muscle you can deliberately develop. Practise moving between different thinking styles and stakeholder viewpoints, particularly when one perspective feels uncomfortable or unfamiliar. The aim is not to abandon your own view, but to broaden your thinking before deciding what to do.

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Find out more

See Gemma’s blog - Why Strategic Leaders Need to Shift Perspective

Sign up to Gemma’s monthly newsletter for more tips & insights

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Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Strategic Leader podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, please give us 5 stars! It will help others find the show. Check out our previous episodes and remember to subscribe so you don’t miss our future episodes. If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, we’d love to hear from you:

www.gemmabullivant.co.uk (for Gemma)

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How well do you really understand the impact you have on other people, not just the impact you intend to have?

Self-awareness becomes increasingly important as you become more senior because leadership effectiveness depends on far more than your technical expertise. We discuss how your assumptions, preferences, habits, strengths and behaviours shape how you lead, and why understanding how others experience you is essential for strategic leadership.

We also consider the difference between intention and impact, and why feedback is valuable data rather than something you automatically need to accept as fact.

We introduce a five-part approach that moves from awareness to effectiveness. It helps you turn greater self-awareness into intentional choices about how you show up in different situations, rather than relying on your default behaviours.

We also share practical ways to build your self-awareness. You will discover how to gather useful feedback, identify patterns and blind spots, and adapt your leadership approach without feeling that you need to change who you are.

Key points discussed

• Why self-awareness is fundamental to effective strategic leadership.
• How the gap between your intention and your impact can affect how others experience your leadership.
• Why treating feedback as data can make it easier to hear and use constructively.
• Why senior leaders need to ask proactively for feedback rather than simply having an “open door”.
• Practical feedback tools -  “What went well, even better if” and Ask 5 – and how they can make gathering useful feedback simpler and less threatening.

Key takeaway

Self-awareness is not simply knowing your strengths, weaknesses and preferences. Its value comes from understanding your impact on others and using that knowledge to make more intentional choices about how you lead. The goal is not to change who you are, but to adapt your approach when doing so will make you more effective.

Want more?

Read Gemma’s blog for more about this topic and the models/graphics we refer to in the episode.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Strategic Leader podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, please give us 5 stars! It will help others find the show. Check out our previous episodes and remember to subscribe so you don’t miss our future episodes. If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, we’d love to hear from you:

www.gemmabullivant.co.uk (for Gemma)

www.wearegoodthinking.co.uk (for Fi)

What if getting better at conflict could make you a more effective leader, strengthen relationships and help you make better strategic decisions?

Conflict is part of leadership. Different perspectives, priorities, beliefs and ways of working mean disagreement is inevitable.

In fact, we’d be concerned if a senior team agreed on everything. Constructive conflict can provide the challenge we need to test our thinking, improve decisions and reach better outcomes.

We talk about the important distinction between task conflict and relationship conflict, and why understanding our own relationship with disagreement matters. Our past experiences can shape how comfortable we feel with challenge, while previous leadership cultures can leave teams reluctant to speak up even when the environment has changed.

We explore ideas from Smart Conflict: - a practical framework for handling difficult conversations at work more effectively, from understanding our personal conflict settings and regulating emotions to preparing properly, choosing our response and repairing relationships afterwards.

Key points discussed

• The difference between task conflict and relationship conflict.
• Why healthy disagreement can be beneficial.
• The five Rs of conflict
• Why leaders need to be willing to be temporarily unpopular when making difficult decisions.

Key takeaway

Conflict does not have to be destructive. Handled well, it can strengthen thinking, relationships and leadership. The challenge is to understand what we bring to conflict, regulate our response, prepare well and create an environment where people can disagree safely and constructively.

More resources

For more detail and a handy one-page reminder of the 5 conflict habits discussed, check out Gemma’s blog here

The books we mention

Smart Conflict by Alice Driscoll and Louise Van Haarst 

Have a Nice Conflict by Scudder, Patterson & Mitchell

Previous episodes to check out

The Strategic Leader, Series 2, Episode 3: How to Overcome Conflict Avoidance in the Workplace
The Strategic Leader, Series 4, Episode 10: Is It Possible to Be Too Nice at Work?

If you're constantly busy but still feel like you're not making the progress you want, it may may be a sign that you need to sharpen your prioritisation skills.

Effective prioritisation is a strategic leadership skill that creates space for better thinking, stronger decisions and greater impact by focusing on what matters most.

This episode explores why leaders are rarely asked to do less and why becoming more senior often means balancing increasing demands with limited time, energy and resources. We discuss how operational work can keep leaders trapped on the hamster wheel and why intentionally creating time for strategic thinking is essential for long term success.

We talk through two practical tools that have helped us to prioritise more effectively:

The Eisenhower Matrix - helps separate urgent work from genuinely important work, encouraging you to spend more time on strategic activities before they become crises.

The Impact Effort Matrix - a framework for identifying which activities are likely to deliver the greatest value and avoiding work that consumes effort without creating meaningful results.

You can read more about these tools in Gemma’s blog

Key points discussed

• Why prioritisation is a foundational strategic leadership skill, not simply a time management technique.
• How to move away from constant operational busyness and create more space for strategic thinking.
• Using the Eisenhower Matrix to distinguish between urgent and important work.
• Understanding how different thinking styles influence the way we approach important tasks.
• Applying the Impact Effort Matrix to prioritise projects, change initiatives and strategic decisions.
• Recognising opportunities to delegate, automate or redesign recurring tasks.
• Identifying work that delivers little value despite consuming significant effort.
• Asking "What are the things that only I can do?" to improve delegation and leadership focus.

Key takeaway

Strategic leadership is not about getting more done. It is about making better choices about where your time, energy and attention create the greatest value. Prioritisation is the tool that makes this possible.

Check out our previous episodes on similar themes:

S1.11 - How to prioritise more strategically

S5.01 - Moving between detail and big picture

Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Strategic Leader podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, please give us 5 stars! It will help others find the show. Check out our previous episodes and remember to subscribe so you don’t miss our future episodes. If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, we’d love to hear from you:

www.gemmabullivant.co.uk (for Gemma)

www.wearegoodthinking.co.uk (for Fi)

Do you ever leave a meeting wishing you'd made your point more clearly?

Have you ever presented a great idea only to find the conversation getting lost in the detail?

Whether you are presenting to a board, writing a one-page proposal, leading a team meeting or responding to a senior executive, your audience doesn’t need every detail. They need the information that helps them understand the issue, why it matters and what happens next.

This episode explores practical ways to structure your thinking so your communication is concise, purposeful and audience focused.

As part of building your strategic toolkit, we discuss simple frameworks that make strategic communication easier, including the What, So What, Now What model, using signposting to keep discussions on track, structuring documents around five key questions, and communicating from the headline down rather than the detail up.

We also explore why strategic summaries are different from status updates, how to avoid overwhelming people with information, and why leaders who communicate with clarity build greater credibility, confidence and influence.

Key points discussed

• Why strategic summaries are a foundational tool in your strategic toolkit and different from status updates.
• How audience and purpose should shape every communication.
• Using signposting to keep meetings focused and avoid circular discussions.
• Applying the What, So What, Now What framework as a repeatable strategic tool.
• Structuring strategic papers using five simple questions.
• Why headline first communication is more effective than leading with detail.
• Knowing when detailed information belongs in supporting documents rather than presentations.
• How strategic clarity demonstrates leadership, builds confidence and helps move decisions forward.

Key takeaway

Strategic leadership is not about communicating everything you know. It is about using the right tools to communicate what your audience needs to know. Clear thinking, clear structure and clear messaging help people make better decisions and take meaningful action.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Strategic Leader podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, please give us 5 stars! It will help others find the show.

Check out our previous episodes here - and remember to subscribe so you don’t miss our future episodes. If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, we’d love to hear from you:

www.gemmabullivant.co.uk (for Gemma)

www.wearegoodthinking.co.uk (for Fi)

What if you could cut through leadership complexity and focus on the handful of tools that consistently make the biggest difference?

Every leader collects ideas, models, frameworks and approaches throughout their career. The challenge is not finding new tools. The challenge is remembering which ones matter most and knowing when to use them.

This episode launches Series 6 of The Strategic Leader and introduces the concept of the strategic leadership toolkit. Rather than chasing every new model or leadership trend, we explore how to identify the essential tools that deserve a permanent place in your toolkit and help you navigate complex situations with greater confidence and intention.

We touch on a couple of ones likely to make the shortlist – self-awareness as a foundational leadership capability and the ability to create a clear, succinct one-pager, which will no doubt form a couple of future episodes where we will go into more depth.

Throughout the conversation, we explore how strategic leaders can become more intentional about the tools they use, avoid default habits and build a toolkit that supports better leadership decisions every day.

Key Points Discussed

• Why Series 6 focuses on essential strategic leadership tools
• The concept of a leadership toolkit and why intentional tool selection matters
• How leaders often accumulate too many models, frameworks and ideas
• Self-awareness as a cornerstone of effective leadership
• The importance of summarising complexity through a strategic one pager
• How clear thinking improves communication and decision making
• Using priorities and "even overs" to make better strategic choices

Key Takeaway

Strategic leadership is not about collecting more tools. It is about understanding which tools matter most, knowing when to use them and applying them with intention.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Strategic Leader podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, please give us 5 stars! It will help others find the show.

Check out our previous episodes here - and remember to subscribe so you don’t miss our future episodes. If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, we’d love to hear from you:

www.gemmabullivant.co.uk (for Gemma)

www.wearegoodthinking.co.uk (for Fi)

What happens when doing the right thing for your department is not the right thing for the organisation?

Senior leaders regularly face decisions where functional priorities clash with enterprise-wide objectives. Navigating these tensions effectively is a critical leadership skill.

At the top table, leaders wear several hats. One of them represents their functional expertise and accountability, whether in HR, finance, marketing or operations. Another represents their responsibility to the organisation as a whole. Problems arise when those responsibilities pull in different directions. This episode explores how leaders can recognise and manage those conflicts without becoming entrenched in departmental positions.

The discussion explores practical ways to approach competing priorities, including lifting the conversation to organisational purpose, identifying creative alternatives beyond either-or thinking, and introducing external stakeholder perspectives such as customers, employees or shareholders.

We also explore the role of ego, emotional attachment to functional goals, and the importance of balancing advocacy for your team with responsibility for wider business outcomes.

A key focus is understanding trade-offs. Leaders are encouraged to look beyond immediate gains and consider the longer-term consequences of decisions. By taking a broader strategic perspective, leadership teams can make better choices that support sustainable organisational success rather than short term departmental wins.

Key Points Discussed

• • Why senior leaders must balance functional leadership with enterprise leadership responsibilities.
  • Common examples of conflicting departmental objectives and competing KPIs.
  • The importance of stepping back and reconnecting decisions to organisational purpose.
  • How healthy tension between departments can drive stronger outcomes.
  • Using creative thinking to identify a third solution beyond opposing positions.
  • Bringing external stakeholder perspectives into decision making.
  • Recognising when ego or emotional attachment may be influencing decisions.
  • Exploring short term and long-term trade-offs before making strategic choices.

Key Takeaway

Conflicting priorities are an unavoidable part of senior leadership. The most effective leaders can advocate for their function while also stepping back to make decisions that serve the wider organisation.

Strategic leadership requires balancing competing interests, understanding trade-offs and continually asking what will create the best outcome for the business as a whole.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Strategic Leader podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, please give is 5 stars! It will help others find the show.Check out our previous episodes and remember to subscribe so you don’t miss our future shows.

If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, we’d love to hear from you:

www.gemmabullivant.co.uk (for Gemma)

www.wearegoodthinking.co.uk (for Fi)

We explore how senior leaders can better understand their leadership impact, communication style and executive presence, particularly when operating at the top table.

Paul Kinkaid brings lessons from 20 years as a British Army officer and his work in leadership consultancy to explore his concept of “forensic leadership”, understanding the positive and negative traces leaders leave through everyday interactions, behaviours and communication.. We talk about high pressure leadership, imposter syndrome, confidence, training, simulation, communication and the importance of being conscious, deliberate and intentional.

The conversation highlights why leadership impact is not just about intention. It is about how people experience us. From red traces created by poor communication or unconscious behaviours, to green traces that build trust, confidence and commitment, this episode offers senior leaders a useful language for self reflection, feedback and team development.

We also discuss why simple, accessible communication matters, how leaders can prepare themselves before important meetings, and how emotionally intelligent leaders can use feedback to become better enablers of others.

Key points discussed

• Why high pressure leadership in the military has useful parallels for senior leaders in organisations
• The balance between imposter syndrome, confidence and finding a “good enough” way forward
• How training, simulation and rehearsal improve leadership under pressure
• How leadership behaviours leave lasting traces on teams and culture
• The difference between intention and impact in senior leadership
• How leaders create positive or negative “traces” through behaviour and communication
• Why clear communication and executive presence matter in senior leadership
• How “red trace” feedback can open up more constructive leadership conversations

Key takeaway

Senior leaders are always leaving traces, whether they realise it or not. The opportunity is to become more aware of those traces, use feedback well and choose how to show up with greater intention.

If this episode has prompted you to reflect on your own leadership impact, executive coaching can help create the awareness, perspective and behavioural shifts that strengthen how you lead.

Guest bio

Paul Kinkaid is a former British Army Officer, leadership consultant, speaker and author of Forensic Leadership. After serving for 20 years across 44 countries and five continents, Paul now works with leaders and organisations around the world to improve leadership impact, team performance and executive presence. His work explores the “traces” leaders leave behind, helping people become more conscious, deliberate and intentional in how they lead.

You can connect with Paul on LinkedIn here, where you can connect and find out more about his work.

Thank you for tuning into this episode of The Strategic Leader podcast.

If you enjoyed the show, please give is 5 stars! It will help others find the show.Check out our previous episodes and remember to subscribe so you don’t miss our future shows.

If you have any questions or want to discuss anything, we’d love to hear from you:

www.gemmabullivant.co.uk (for Gemma)

www.wearegoodthinking.co.uk (for Fi)