You don't have to wait for a good day. Happiness doesn't only happen to us — often we can create it, through small, ordinary things that reliably lift your mood. The trick is noticing what works for you and doing a little more of it. Some days just feel better than others You wake up in a good mood. Work flows. Someone makes you laugh. You get outside. Something goes your way. Other days… not so much. It's easy to treat that as luck — but a surprising amount of it is within r

One of a leader's most important jobs is developing future leaders — including the person who could eventually do your job. But as organisations flatten and stepping-stone roles disappear, you can't rely on the next role to develop people. You have to create the experiences deliberately, giving people chances to lead before they have the title. The confronting question: who's getting ready for your job? We often say that one of a leader's most important jobs is to develop oth

AI can get a leadership team to an answer faster — but getting to an answer faster isn't the same as thinking better together. The conversation a team has on the way to a decision is often where collective intelligence is built, and it's the part we most risk skipping. AI is speeding leaders up — but at what cost? I use AI every day: to research, summarise, test ideas, challenge my thinking and get to an answer faster. Increasingly, so do the leaders and teams I work with, an

Most of us prepare for difficult conversations emotionally — rehearsing them over and over in our heads. But the conversation you keep having in your head can't change the one you're avoiding in real life. Preparing practically is simpler: get clear on the outcome, get clear on what needs to be said, think about the other person, then say it out loud. The committee meeting in your head My son's basketball club recently sent its young players an email about confidence and pres

When your role suddenly expands — a bigger team, more reporting lines, accountability across functions, often after others have left — you can't lead 15 or 20 people the way you led six or eight. Not because they need less leadership, but because you can no longer be the source of all of it. The shift is from leading everyone to building more leadership around you. Your remit grew, but your time and pay didn't Has your leadership remit expanded in the last 12 months? A larger

If you want to lead differently, your calendar has to make it possible. Treated well, your calendar isn't just a record of what needs to get done — it's a design for how you want to lead, with protected space to think, prepare and set direction. Have we changed how we lead, but not our calendars? I've been doing a lot of work with leaders navigating change lately: new structures, new teams, new expectations, new ways of working. We spend a lot of time talking about how we nee