Do you have a Setup?

"Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." -Victor Hugo

David Lynch, the director behind Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, offers a perspective on how to take a concept from idea to early execution.

He writes that inspiration often arrives unexpectedly. You wake up one morning with an idea. You can see it clearly. You know what you want to make.

Yet, that's only the beginning.

To bring it into the world, you need what he calls a setup. And that can include:

a) A workshop

b) A painting studio

c) A music room

d) A desk where you can write

A place where the tools are ready, so when inspiration arrives, you don't have to spend the day figuring out where or how to begin.

Without that setup, the idea might simmer in the background. Life gets in the way. And eventually it just fades.

I hadn't thought much about creativity in those terms before, but David’s framework is alluring For me, some of my strongest ideas come in the morning with a coffee in hand. I can then immediately race to my home-office to start building it.

We spend a lot of time searching for inspiration. Maybe we should spend more time building the physical conditions that allow inspiration to take hold.

Are Sabbaticals Worth the Time?

Cape Town, South Africa

“Stress comes from ignoring things that you shouldn't be ignoring." -Jeff Bezos

I was once speaking with the CEO of $10B business and asked him what the secret to his career success was. And the answer was not what I was expecting.

With a smile, he said, “I’ve taken two sabbaticals.”

Research and experience are pointing to something important: a well-designed sabbatical can improve creativity, energy, perspective and long-term engagement. Companies including Intel have recognized this for decades, offering structured sabbaticals as part of their talent strategy.

In Big Time Off, DJ DiDonna argues that six to eight weeks is often enough to create lasting change. The goal is to create enough space day-to-day to reflect, explore new interests and reconnect with what matters.

DiDonna has noticed that there are three types of  sabbatical takers:

1. Achievers - They plan to be busy on the sabbatical by writing a book, learning new language, or being certified in a new area

2. Explorers - They want to travel and be more spontaneous 

3. Seekers - They are much for inward focused trying to find their essence or asking self-reflection prompts, “what gets me excited?”

One idea from the book stood out to me: keep a journal.

Writing down your thoughts during a sabbatical helps make sense of the experience. It creates space to notice patterns, challenge assumptions and return with greater clarity.

For leaders, a sabbatical isn’t time away from leadership.

It’s an investment.

Have you ever taken a sabbatical, or seriously considered one?

Why Competence is the Enemy of Growth

Seattle, Washington

"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." -Marcus Aurelius

I’ll never forget a quiet observation made by Nikolaj, my physiotherapist, during a routine rehab session. I was recovering from a knee injury and had reached a stage where my prescribed routine felt smooth and predictable. I assumed this pain-free consistency was the ultimate metric of success.

He saw it differently. Looking at my effortlessly executed reps, he paused and said: "Challenge equals progress."

In physiology, this is the foundational law of progressive overload. If a muscle or joint operates entirely within its comfort zone, the biological incentive to rebuild drops to zero. Maintenance occurs, but optimization stops. To unlock the next tier of capability, we must intentionally introduce a new variable: more resistance, structural instability, or complex ranges of motion.

In the corporate arena, high-performing leaders frequently fall into the illusion of a steady state. Because business results look healthy from the outside and familiar problems are being solved with elegant efficiency, leaders assume they are growing. In reality, they have simply mastered a plateau.

Consider the transformation of Microsoft in 2014. When Satya Nadella took over as CEO, the company was financially dominant yet culturally stagnant, shackled by its own historic competence in a desktop-first world. To trigger the next era of growth, Nadella had to intentionally break Microsoft’s comfortable, highly profitable status quo. He pivoted the entire corporate strategy toward an unproven cloud-first model (Azure) and fundamentally shifted the internal culture from a defensive group of "know-it-alls" to a curious network of "learn-it-alls." It was an operational masterclass in forcing a massive enterprise out of its comfort zone to unlock its next multi-trillion-dollar horizon.

Teams that prioritize psychological comfort over intellectual friction stop experimenting. When assumptions go unquestioned, innovation stalls, and an organization gradually loses its competitive edge to more agile, restless market entrants.

However, the pursuit of challenge cannot be reckless. Growth occurs at a very specific friction point, a concept psychologists call the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

The sweet spot is a practice in precise calibration: difficult enough to force psychological and operational adaptation, but achievable enough to sustain strategic momentum.

Many leaders waiting to take on a larger mandate point to a lack of confidence as their primary constraint. But confidence is rarely a prerequisite for growth; it is the lagging indicator of having survived a challenge you weren’t entirely sure you could handle.

As you look over your current day-to-day ask yourself a deceptively simple question: “Where has the work become too easy and predictable for me?”

The areas where you feel most comfortable and most effortlessly in control, may not be where your future value is being generated. 

Challenge equals progress.

How to have Better Meetings

Sydney, Australia

“Well begun is half done." - Aristotle

Most leaders spend a large part of their week in meetings. Over 50% if you're an executive. Curiously, few are ever taught how to run one well.

Before sending the next calendar invite, try the 5 Ps: Purpose, Participants, Process, Preparation, and Progress.

It is a simple discipline, used inside large organizations such as BHP, that can save hours and improve the quality of decisions.

1. Purpose
Why are we meeting? Be clear from the start. Is the meeting for a decision, a discussion, a brainstorm, or a critical update? If the purpose is not strong enough to pull people away from their real work, the meeting may not need to happen.

2. Participants
Who needs to be in the room? Invite the people required to make the decision, shape the discussion, or execute the work. A smaller room usually creates a sharper conversation.

3. Process
How will the meeting run? Set the agenda. Decide the format. Clarify the ground rules. Good meetings have a rhythm. Poor meetings go on a tangent.

4. Preparation
What needs to happen before the meeting? Send the agenda. Share the data. Ask people to read, think, and arrive ready. A meeting should not be the place where people first encounter the issue.

5. Progress
What changed because we met? End with decisions, actions, owners, and dates. People should leave knowing what was agreed, what happens next, and who is responsible.

Meetings are one of the clearest expressions of leadership.

Strategic Questions That Uncover a Company's Real Culture

Jersey City, New Jersey, USA

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”‍ ‍- Aristotle, as interpreted by Will Durant for Nicomachean Ethics

When you’re vetting a new partner, a potential employer, or a client, it’s easy to get blinded by what’s glossy. 

Their website is beautifully designed, the values page is filled with curated language, the leadership speaks with polished precision, and the case studies look like an agency wrote them.

But the real culture of an organization actually doesn't live in its brochure website. It can be found in the day-to-day reality of how things actually get done.

I was having coffee with a partner at a high-end law firm. On paper, and in the marbled lobby, everything looked immaculate. But as we spoke, I realized I didn't want the Marketing team’s version of the business. I wanted the operating version of the company. As an executive coach, I wanted to know three things: a) if the strategy was actually coherent b) if people felt ownership, and c) if the team was truly energized.

I came up with this list of 9 questions that pierces the veneer:

1. Company's living values

Most firms have values listed on a wall or a website. Instead, ask: “What are your values and how do they show up?” Note: If they can’t point to a specific, hard decision they made because of those values, they’re just slogans.

2. Strategy

A strategic plan doesn’t need to be a public manifesto. Instead, ask: “Who writes it and who manages it?” Note: If the leadership team can’t answer that clearly, strategy is likely just an abstract concept, not a management practice.

3. North Star

A real vision unifies a company. Test this by asking: “Can your leaders describe the future you’re building in plain, non-corporate English?” If they start using jargon, they don’t have a vision. Instead, they are repeating a slide deck.

4. The junior employee test

Ask the leadership: “Can you recite your top goals for this year without looking them up? Could your most junior employees do the same?” If the answer is no, it signifies a communication problem

5. Communications

Town halls, emails, and offsites are just channels. The real question is: “Does your communication create trust and momentum?” Culture will inevitably suffer if information is treated like a commodity

6. Office Weather

Dashboards track metrics, but they don’t track morale of employees. Ask leaders: “Are people energized by the direction of the company?” The best leaders can read the room before the turnover data confirms the problem.

7. Focus

There are a plethora of ideas at most companies. What is really required in my humble opinion is focus.  Ask: “What have you explicitly said 'no' to lately?” If they can’t name a strategic "no," they aren't protecting their capacity.

8. What is the cadence of strategy?

If the leadership team claims strategy is a priority, ask how much time they spend debating it. If they aren’t talking about the future every single month, it’s not a priority.

9. Big Picture

KPIs, OKRs, and scorecards are important to track progress of the company. The real question is: “Do your people understand how their specific work connects to the firm’s success?” If they can’t see the connection, they are doing busy work, as my old manager used to say.

The Bottom Line:

These questions might seem simple, but they are incredibly difficult to answer for a company that isn't truly aligned.

Next Step: Strong leadership is built on clarity. If you’re trying to assess a potential partnership, audit your own organization, or simply need an outside perspective on whether your culture matches your ambition, I’m available for a 1:1 conversation.

Building Enduring Leadership: Lessons from Rome

Rome, Italy

Walking through a beautiful and impressive Rome on a recent trip with my family, I was pondering a handful of questions:

• What makes institutions last?

• What creates everlasting culture?

• What kind of leadership compounds over decades?

Modern leadership rewards speed, responsiveness, and short-term optimization.

But walking through the history of Rome raises a different type of question. What allows institutions, cultures, and leadership principles to endure for centuries?

Rome forces us to look past the current news cycle. Its architecture, infrastructure, governance, and cultural influence were not built for immediate validation. Instead, they were constructed with the long term in mind. Roads connected the empire. Aqueducts served generations. Buildings were constructed not simply for utility, but to communicate values, identity, and ambition across time. I was curious about why buildings in Rome are so beautiful. My research led me to the notion that architects in Rome wanted buildings to uplift people emotionally and spiritually.

Modern organizations rarely think this way. Operational urgency often consumes the leadership agenda. Important work gets done, but often without reflection on whether the organization is building something durable beneath the daily activity.

Enduring leadership requires a longer time horizon. Leaders like Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Masayoshi Son, and Yvon Chouinard embody intergenerational thining. They ask their leaders to think not only about growth, but about resilience. In my own framework, this begins with Vision, the ability to see the big picture, set strategic goals, and inspire alignment.

Without a clear vision, you are merely reacting to the quarter. With it, you are building an institution. Leaders who embrace the long view understand that their primary job is not just to execute in the present, but to cultivate a foundation that survives the inevitable pressure of the future.

Rome also highlights a critical truth: systems matter more than personalities. In many modern firms, leaders become central to everything. Decisions bottleneck, information stays at the top, and teams become dependent rather than empowered. Such organizations may be challenged in scaling sustainably.

The Roman Empire, despite its complexities, demonstrated the power of institutional continuity. Durable organizations cannot rely solely on charisma or individual brilliance. They require structures, such as governance, communication standards, and repeatable processes that allow good judgment to persist even when the heroic leader is not in the room.

Under the current conditions of AI disruption, geopolitical instability, and burnout, it is tempting to prioritize reaction over reflection. But enduring leadership requires a delicate balance.

This is where Adaptability becomes a defining pillar. It is the capacity to embrace change and navigate complexity with a growth mindset. Rome thrived because it could assimilate new ideas, technologies, and territories without losing its core identity. Today’s most effective executives do the same. 

Perhaps the most striking thing about Rome is the sense of continuity, with the feeling that generations contributed to something larger than themselves.

They understand that leadership is about shaping the teams, cultures, and standards that continue creating value long after they are gone.

In that sense, enduring leadership is less about personal legacy and more about stewardship.

Next Steps: Are you keen on creating a career that endures cycles? Let’s have an initial 1:1 conversation to elevate you or your team’s leadership impact.

AI Anxiety is Actually an Invitation for Growth

Berlin, Germany

Publicly, leadership teams are praising innovation, transformation, and AI-first strategies. 

Privately, many executives are grappling with something far more isolating: a quiet and constant fear of obsolescence.

Here is the challenge: the anxiety isn't about the neural networks, technical architecture, the automation pipelines, or data integration. It is about the leader. It is about relevance, judgment, and the sudden feeling that the ground is shifting beneath a hard-earned identity.

For decades, senior leadership was synonymous with having the answer. You climbed the ladder because you possessed the sharpest pattern recognition, the deepest industry knowledge, and the most reliable judgment. You were, by definition, the Expert in the Room.

AI dismantles that value proposition. When a machine can synthesize complex strategy, draft competitive analysis, and weigh trade-offs in seconds, the traditional Expert identity becomes fragile. This creates a specific kind of professional vertigo. The anxiety isn't just about the business model; it’s about the self. When your career is your identity, and your expertise is your status, seeing those assets partially automated feels less like a technological shift and more like a personal threat.

Previous technological transitions unfolded over years, allowing leaders time to adjust their posture. AI, however, evolves in real-time. Executives are bombarded daily with headlines about shifting workflows, younger employees adopting tools at breakneck speeds, and competitors experimenting aggressively.

This creates a persistent background noise of inadequacy. Even leaders who appear calm externally often feel behind, cognitively overloaded, or uncertain of where to focus. This is a form of anticipatory stress—the pressure to lead an adaptation before fully understanding what you are adapting to.

Ironically, the more technologically advanced our organizations become, the more human leadership qualities matter. When information becomes a commodity, the premium shifts to discernment and meaning-making.

To navigate this, we can anchor ourselves in the principles outlined in the 12 Pillars of Executive Leadership. Two of the pillars particularly serve as the antidote to AI-induced anxiety:

• Self-Awareness: AI challenges our professional identity, making deep self-awareness non-negotiable. You must understand your own personality traits, strengths, and emotional patterns, especially how you react when your expert status is threatened. True leadership in the age of AI requires you to recognize the difference between a real business threat and a perceived threat to your personal ego.

• Adaptability: This is your best defense against obsolescence. Embracing change and navigating complexity with a growth mindset is no longer just a corporate buzzword; it is a survival skill. The leaders who thrive are the ones who treat AI not as a competitor to their expertise, but as a catalyst for their next phase of growth.
  

The strongest leaders are now practicing intellectual humility. They are willing to say:

• "I do not fully know where this leads yet."

• "Some assumptions we built our careers around may need to evolve."

• "We should experiment thoughtfully rather than panic."

This creates trust. Employees do not expect perfection during periods of total disruption; they expect steadiness. And steadiness becomes incredibly valuable when the environment turns volatile.

Throughout history, technological change has rewarded the adaptable. But adaptation is difficult when identity is rigid. Leaders who thrive over the next decade will be those who can evolve without losing themselves. They will be the people who can maintain curiosity without panic, confidence without arrogance, and ambition without exhaustion.

AI will undoubtedly reshape your industries, workflows, and org charts. But many of the deepest tensions surrounding this transition are fundamentally human: fear of irrelevance, fear of losing status, and the fear of no longer knowing where one fits.

Technology simply exposes those anxieties faster. The leaders who navigate this period best will not be the loudest voices or the fastest adopters. They will be the people who stay grounded in their core leadership pillars while everything around them changes.

Next Steps: Are you currently triggered by the colossal growth of AI and need a partner to help navigate your path? Let’s have an initial 1:1 conversation to explore how we can elevate you or your team’s leadership impact.

Why the Quality of your Questions Determines your Outcome

When asked to trace the origin story of Salesforce, Marc Benioff bypassed the usual startup mythology of hustle and vision. Instead, he pointed to a quieter, more fundamental driver: the quality of his questions. He was clear: without that practice of deep inquiry, the company would had never existed.

In executive leadership, we are conditioned to believe that our value lies in the clarity of our answers. The higher you climb, the more people look to you to solve problems, resolve conflicts, and set the direction. There is an implicit pressure to be the Expert in the Room.

But there is a great limitation in this mindset. If you spend your time exclusively providing answers, you are only ever as good as your current knowledge base. You are working within the ceiling of your existing experience.

The most transformative leaders I’ve worked with have mastered a different art: they treat inquiry as their primary instrument of influence. They understand that the quality of your life and the effectiveness of your leadership are determined by the quality of the questions you ask yourself and others.

When you default to providing answers, you unintentionally signal to your team that you are the sole source of insight. This creates an environment where people wait for direction rather than exercising their own judgment. It stifles autonomy and, more importantly, it narrows the field of possibility.

Coaching is not about providing solutions; it is about cultivating the capacity to generate them. When you pivot from answering to inquiring,  you do two things:

1. You activate the brain: Neuroscience shows that insight-driven reflection activates the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex, improving emotional regulation and decision-making.

2. You scale leadership: You empower others to find the answer themselves, shifting the organizational culture from reactive to proactive.

Not all questions are created equal. A low-quality question is often disguised as a suggestion (e.g., "Don't you think we should do X?"). These are rarely questions at all, but rather control mechanisms.

A high-quality question is open, challenging, and expansive. It reframes the situation and forces the brain out of its habitual thinking patterns. It helps leaders move from tactical management to strategic insight.

Based on the frameworks we use at Above, a great question should focus on one of three dimensions:

• Clarity: Helping you see the environment or yourself accurately.

• Capability: Focusing on habits and systems that support performance.

• Courage: Encouraging you to act with integrity and conviction, even under pressure

To sharpen your decision-making and lead with greater presence, try introducing these questions into your daily rhythm. Whether you are reflecting alone or leading a team meeting, these inquiries can unlock breakthrough thinking.

To Build Clarity:

• "What is the conversation I am avoiding right now?"

• "What would 'great' look like if this went really well?"

• "What belief might be limiting my next step?"

To Build Capability:

• "Where am I overusing one of my strengths to my own detriment?"

• "If I were 10% bolder, what would I do differently?"

• "What habits are helping me be my most effective self today?"

To Build Courage:

• "If I were advising my best friend in this situation, what would I tell them?"

• "What would change if I fully trusted myself?"

• "What is the toughest decision I’ve made in the past six months, and what did it teach me about my values?"

Leadership is an inner practice that translates into an outer performance. If you feel stuck, or if you feel that your team is running in circles, don’t look for a better answer. Look for a better question.

The next time you face a high-stakes decision, pause. Replace the pressure to be right with the curiosity to be clear.

The most powerful leaders aren't the ones with the most answers. They are the ones who know exactly which questions will unlock the next level of performance for themselves and their organization.

Next Steps: Are you navigating a complex leadership challenge and need a partner to help you ask the right questions? Let’s have an initial 1:1 conversation to explore how we can elevate your or your team’s leadership impact.

The Executive’s Inner Game: Staying Out of Your Own Way

“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” - Lao Tzu

I like the premise of W. Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Tennis. His central argument is that every performance, whether it’s on the court or in the office, is really a tale of two cities. There is the outer game, which involves the technical skills, the strategy, and the mechanics of the work. Then there is the inner game, which involves the psychological state we bring to those tasks.

Gallwey describes the internal conflict between Self 1 (our analytical, often hyper-critical voice) and Self 2 (our intuitive, capable, and experienced "doer").

It’s a pattern I recognize in my own career, and one I frequently discuss with the executives I work with. We often get stuck in a Self 1 loop, where we analyze a presentation while delivering it or question our own intuition just as we’re about to make a critical call. That internal noise creates friction. It takes us out of the present moment and complicates tasks that we are actually perfectly equipped to handle.

Here’s how a few ideas from that perspective might translate to the meeting room.

When we spend our energy critiquing our own performance in real-time, we aren't fully present. It’s hard to listen to a team or assess a situation clearly when you’re busy evaluating your own internal reaction to it.

This is where Self-Awareness, one of the 12 Pillars of Executive Leadership, becomes useful. It’s simply the ability to notice when that internal judge is getting loud and distracting. When you catch yourself overthinking, the goal isn't to force a change in mindset, but just to acknowledge that the inner judge is active, which often helps it quiet down on its own.

Gallwey suggests that the secret to winning is often just "learning not to try too hard." In an executive context, where we are trained to push and optimize, that feels counterintuitive. We often assume that if we aren't forcing a result, we aren't leading.

But I’ve found that our Decision-Making often sharpens when we rely on the expertise we’ve spent years building. When we lean too heavily on metrics, optimization and rigid controls, we’re essentially engaging in Self 1 management, focusing on the measurement of the work rather than the work itself.

There is a balance to be struck. Self aware leaders know when to use data and when to trust their experience. They recognize that they’ve already put in the hours, trained their instincts, and hired the right people. At that point, the most effective move is often to get out of the way and let the team, and their own intuition, do what they’re capable of doing.

The end goal here isn’t a specific technique, but a state of ‘relaxed concentration.’  It’s the ability to engage fully with the complexities of the business without the frantic energy that comes from trying to prove our worth.

This, I believe, is the essence of true Executive Presence. A leader who is comfortable in their own skin doesn't need to shout loudly. They provide a steadying influence. When a leader is free of that constant inner critic, the people around them feel it. The environment becomes calmer. And teams often find it easier to focus on their work, rather than worrying about the leader’s internal state.

The next time you are at work,  it might be worth remembering your internal tennis court. Sometimes the biggest challenge is simply letting our own capability take over.

What Civilization, Cognition, and Culture Teach Us About Leadership

Athens, Greece

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” -Lao Tzu

Most leaders prioritize strategy, talent, execution, and incentives. They are vital, of course. But after years of working for and with senior leaders across the globe, I’ve come to a different conclusion: the most critical organizational problems are psychological.

Two companies can share the same talent, capital and technology yet operate in entirely different realities. One adapts under pressure and surfaces issues early; the other is paralyzed by politics and internal friction. The difference isn't on a balance sheet. It’s in the room, in how people think together.

To understand this, I often return to three writers whose work helps me diagnose the invisible mechanics of leadership: Joseph Henrich (The WEIRDest People in the World), Iain McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary), and Michael Muthukrishna (A Theory of Everyone). They come from anthropology, neuroscience, and cultural evolution, yet they converge on one simple truth: High-performing organizations aren’t machines. They are psychological environments. And whether they realize it or not, leaders are their architects.

Henrich’s work is a vital reminder that institutions shape people. In fact, culture is the silent curriculum of behavior. Employees learn quickly, often within weeks, what is actually rewarded. Is disagreement a risk to be avoided or a contribution to be valued? Do you speak the truth, or do you echo the boss? Once those behaviors calcify, they stop being intentional and start being normal. When you walk into a performative culture, the issues are palpable: meetings happen after the meeting, and information is filtered before it ever reaches the top.

Then there is the pitfall of modern management, in what McGilchrist calls a drift toward hyper-reductionism. We are obsessed with dashboards, metrics, and optimization. None of these tools are inherently bad, but they are often used to replace human judgment. When leaders mistake measurement for understanding, they lose the ability to see the system as a whole.

This is where the principles I advocate in my 12 Pillars of Executive Leadership become critical. Exceptional leaders resist this narrowing effect. They know how to balance Decision-Making, using data to inform their choices without letting metrics imprison them, and they maintain the Self-Awareness to recognize when they are optimizing locally while weakening the wider system. They know how to zoom in without losing the wider picture.

Finally, Muthukrishna offers the most important insight: intelligence is collective. We are culturally obsessed with the myth of the genius founder, but progress is actually built on networks of shared learning. The smartest companies are environments where intelligence compounds because people feel safe enough to think clearly together.

We are entering an era where AI will commoditize technical skill and raw information. The advantage is shifting toward something much harder to replicate: the quality of the human system itself.

The organizations that thrive in the future just may be the most psychologically intelligent.

Getting Ready for a Promotion

Rotterdam, Netherlands

I learned an uncomfortable truth about career progression from a long-time client recently. For years, he had been doing everything right: hitting targets, mentoring his team, and consistently being the go-to person. Yet, he never got his promotion.

When we finally sat down to figure out why, the answer was startling: he was too good at his current job.

He thought being the best operator in the room was his ticket to success. But to the executive team, that made him indispensable specifically in his current role. By making himself the only person who could solve certain problems, he had inadvertently capped his own ceiling.

He was being evaluated not on his technical output, but on his Executive Presence, a variable he had not fully invested in. It is a common paradox: we get promoted to our current level because of our mastery and attention to detail, but we often fail to recognize that the skills required to get there are rarely the same skills required to go further.

To move to the next level, you have to shift from doing to deciding.

When you are a subject matter expert, your value is rooted in being the smartest person in the room. That works when you are an individual contributor. But as a leader, your job changes. You are not paid to solve every problem; you are paid to build the environment where the problems get solved by the team.

This is where the transition toward Vision becomes critical. Decision-makers are not mind readers. They are busy managing their own scope and organizational headwinds. They are not tracking your day-to-day wins unless you make it easy for them to see the strategic impact of your work.

If you cannot summarize your contribution in two sentences, focusing on strategy, revenue, or team health, you likely need to polish your narrative.

In many organizations, promotions are not decided by your direct manager alone. They are decided in rooms you are not in, by a committee of superiors. This is where sponsorship becomes the real currency of career progression.

The question is not just ‘What have I done?’ But also, ‘Who knows about what I have done?’ I have seen clients transform their trajectory by moving from waiting for an annual review to owning the narrative year-round.

Creating a promo package can change the dynamic. It is not about asking for it, but about providing evidence. A clear, concise summary of your impact should include:

• Data: Revenue growth, costs saved, scale achieved

• Leadership: Moments where you influenced with authority

• Growth: Being honest about what has failed, what you have learned, and how you have evolved

This shifts the conversation from Do I deserve a promotion? to How do we strategically prepare me for the next layer of complexity?

Promotion is ultimately an exercise in confidence. It is the organization deciding that you are ready to handle more ambiguity than you do today.

If you feel like your progression has stalled, do not wait for a formal cycle to start the conversation. Start early. Ask your manager and potential sponsors a simple, clarifying question: What are the specific gaps between where I am and where I need to be for that next level? If they cannot give you an answer, it is a strong signal that you need to refocus on your Self-Awareness and Communication skills to bridge that gap.

It is about showing up with a mindset that is already performing at the next level, demonstrating Confidence and Executive Presence long before the title change actually arrives.

Next Steps: If you are feeling stuck or want to evaluate where you stand against the 12 Pillars of Executive Leadership, I am happy to discuss it. Feel free to book a 1:1 chemistry session.

Designing Career Acceleration

Billund, Denmark

“To attain knowledge, add things every day.
To attain wisdom, remove things every day.”

-Lao Tzu

When you think of the word acceleration, what do you think of? For most of us, a car or bicycle might come up.  Many people treat their career like it’s a long road race than treating it like a strategic campaign. Almost how politicians or marketers plan and execute a campaign.  Career acceleration isn’t about adding more, but rather doing the right things, in the right order, with ruthless prioritization. 

One client’s career had slowed down because he was optimizing for being helpful vs essential.

Research from the University of Virginia shows that people possess an “addition bias,” preferring to add Lego bricks to solve problems even when removing them is easier, faster, and perhaps more beautiful. 

As such, you have to get comfortable with the uneasiness of subtraction at work. If you want to move faster, it’s important to focus on P0s and P1s, which are the initiatives that are big bets that will shift the needle for the company. And thus, the organization sees you and the value you provide. 

To do this, requires a level of Vision and Decision-Making, the ability to look at hundreds of tasks and choosing the handful that genuinely matters for the company. Being strategic can be hard, because it requires being a master at ignoring the noise. 

Where does this take us?  You change from being the person who “gets things done” to the person who is trusted to “see around the corners.”  This is how leaders can get invited to bigger conversations. 

It should be noted that visibility is not self-promotion. It’s ensuring that the right people understand the way you think. This leads to creating sponsors, which are senior leaders who are willing to bet on you and speak highly of you when you aren’t in the room. These relationships begin because you show Accountability and Communication over time. 

I learned the importance of pruning from my father who was a botanist for many years. I recommend his technique to step away from work that you’ve outgrown. Do you need to be going to that recurring meeting? Has that project or task force become a treadmill? Perhaps it’s time to delegate or even recommend killing it. 

Next Steps: Career acceleration is the difference between being ‘always busy’ to being ‘positioned for tomorrow.’ It happens when you step back, reassess your behaviors, and start modeling Executive Presence in everything you do. It’s not always what you do, it’s also how you do it.

Are you thinking about accelerating your career? Book a 1:1 chemistry session with me

Navigating the First 100 Days in a New Role

Copenhagen, Denmark

When I got my role at YouTube/Google, my brother, who was then a COO of a company, recommended a book that I must read, The First 90 Days.

(By the way, I don’t know why the author didn’t choose 100. Most people like big round numbers. But I get it, the first quarter is the focus.)

Talented leaders sometimes fall into a trap that they must avoid - starting to fix things and constantly in motion to show their value. They can often mistake activity for impact. They rely too much on their skillsets and perhaps bring in the working culture of the old company. 

The best advice I’ve heard from an executive for how to handle the first 100 days is this - “be a sponge.”  It’s an opportunity to observe, learn, and then integrate. 

There is an incredible need to lean into Self-Awareness. People are watching your body language, your insights, and your questions.  But also it’s an opportunity to lean into your surroundings. Before changing anything, listen to the room. What are people saying in meetings? What topics make people uncomfortable? What is not being said?

You were hired for your expertise, so you also don’t want to disappear into the background. You need to speak up with a grounded sense of Executive Presence. There is a need to be composed and approachable. You can ask hard questions, and also signal that you have arrived with gravitas to lead through ambiguity.

The first 100 days should also be a window of opportunity in Communication. Don’t wait for your boss to tell you how you’re doing. Ask them about timelines, what good looks like, and what failure looks like, too. 

How you operate in these first few months can become your baseline. If you set a tempo of 100 mph on day one, you’re creating a trap for yourself. You have to demonstrate focus. The leaders I work with who nail their first 100 days slow down enough to see the landscape clearly, used the pillars of leadership to calibrate their approach, and then made intentional choices about how to move forward.

Next Steps: Transitioning into a new role is complex terrain. You don’t have to guess your way through it. Let’s schedule a 1:1 chemistry session.

Developing Executive Presence

Lyon, France

“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” -Lao Tzu

Let’s be honest: most advice on Executive Presence is bad. It leans too hard on charisma or being the loudest person in the room. But presence has nothing to do with volume. The leaders I coach often hit a wall because they’ve relied on their hard skills for years to get them to the table. Suddenly, they get to the table and are told to "be more senior." The shift from manager to leader requires a pivot toward high-level Communication.

I wanted to come up with daily exercises that people can use to improve their Executive Presence. 

1. Body Awareness: Sit tall. Ground your feet. Relax your shoulders. Loosen your jaws (we hold a lot of stress here). And say this sentence out loud “I’m here. I’m open. I’m receptive.” Rationale: Executive presence starts in the body before it appears in the voice

2. Breath Awareness: Inhale for 4 seconds. Then exhale for 6 seconds. Continue until you feel uncomfortable. Rationale: Leaders who can control their breath, can control their pace.

3. Enunciation Awareness: Loudly overarticulate these silly phrases with your mouth fully open. Exaggerate the words and the sounds: “Pa ba — ta da — ka ga,” “Fa va sa za,” “Ma me mi mo mu.” Rationale: Clear speech brings up clear thinking

4. Reading Awareness: Read a random business paragraph aloud. After each sentence, pause and count “one” silently before continuing. Rationale: Authority often comes from timing rather than volume. And leaders who pause well are easier to follow

5. Speaking Awareness: Say these sentences aloud and truly speak the last word cleanly: “This is the right decision.” “The risk is manageable.” “We move forward.” Do not drop off on the final word. Rationale: Strong endings signal conviction.

Leaders who practice this regularly will start seeing a number of benefits: they will be interrupted less, meetings move more efficiently, silence becomes comfortable, and realize that fewer words carry weight. 

Next Steps:  Presence is not about sounding impressive. It is about helping others trust what they hear from you. If you need help in developing your Executive Presence, let’s have a 1:1 chemistry session

Communicating with Authority and Clarity

Milan, Italy

“Silence is a source of great strength.” -Lao Tzu

We often talk about the attention economy. Where social and traditional media companies are vying for your attention. However, have you considered that every work meeting also operates on a single, ruthless economy? Attention. 

Imagine this: you walk in with a perfectly structured argument, lots of context, and ample data, yet it lands with a thud. The frustration you might feel is real. Almost as if your intelligence is invisible. The hard truth is that your communication strategy was designed for a lecture hall. It needs to be adjusted for a room focused on immediate results, and oh yea, with limited attention spans. And sadly, you may be confusing being prepared with being strategic. 

When you lead with context, you are forcing your audience to walk through the mud before they ever see the horizon. You’re providing the "how" before the "what."

In an executive setting, that doesn't look like being prepared. It looks like stalling.

This is where Self-Awareness becomes your most critical tool. You have to catch yourself in the act. Often, the urge to set the stage is actually a symptom of fear, the fear that if you don't show all your math, they won't trust your answer.

But decision-makers aren't evaluating your math. They’re looking for a direction. They need to know your perspective, and they need it with a high degree of legibility.

If you want your ideas to carry weight, you have to stop performing and start being deliberate. It’s not about volume; it’s about posture.

• Lead with the Destination. Stop explaining the journey. If you have a recommendation, put it in the first sentence. Trust your audience to ask for details if they need them. When you lead with the "what," you shift from explaining to enabling. That pivot toward stronger Decision-Making is what separates the manager from the executive.

• Audit "Filler" Language. Notice how often you hedge. Words like "maybe" or "I think" or asking "does that make sense?" unconsciously erode your authority. Stop asking for permission to have an opinion. Your communication is only as effective as your conviction. If the data changes, you can adjust—but don't weaken your presence before you've even finished the thought.

• Use Silence as a Command. This is the hardest skill for high achievers. When you make a point, stop talking. Let the silence do the heavy lifting. When you rush to explain yourself, you’re signaling that you don’t trust your own statement to stand. Silence isn't a gap; it’s a demonstration of Confidence.

Presence is a Choice

Executive presence isn't a personality trait. You don't have to be the loudest person in the room to own it. It is simply the felt sense that you can handle the stakes, the ambiguity, and the complexity in front of you.

If your influence doesn't match your talent, don't try to act more like a leader. Instead, look at where your communication is working against you. It’s rarely about adding more information; it’s about stripping away everything that isn't essential.

Next Steps: Real impact happens when you stop performing and start being steady. If you’re ready to stop guessing and start modeling Executive Presence, let’s have a 1:1 conversation about your trajectory.

Setting Boundaries Without Burning Bridges

Baku, Azerbaijan

“Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.” - Lao Tzu

If life begins with your first breath, then your career begins by saying “yes.”

Leaders signal reliability, capability and commitment by the volume and quality of their “yes’s.” Yes equals ‘you can count on me.’

However, as a career progresses, the number of requests tends to increase, not decrease. Eventually, many leaders find themselves at a crossroads where the sheer number of commitments begins to compete with the need for strategic thinking and deep work. 

The challenge arises when a leader feels the need to maintain that same level of responsiveness while simultaneously trying to protect their capacity to think clearly. As such, it can lead to a tension between wanting to be helpful and the need to focus on high-impact work.

One way to navigate this is through Self-Awareness. It can be useful for leaders to periodically examine the impulses behind their commitments. Often, the tendency to say yes is deeply ingrained in a desire to be a team player. By recognizing these internal triggers, a leader can begin to distinguish between requests that genuinely align with their current goals and those that are simply automatic responses. This awareness allows for a more intentional approach to what one takes on.

The way a boundary is presented often influences the outcome. Communication is essential here. Rather than viewing a "no" as a rejection, it can be helpful to frame it as a clarification of priorities.

When a request doesn’t align with current goals, stating this clearly and respectfully allows the other person to understand the rationale. Consider framing a refusal around a current priority. For example, "I’d love to help, but my current focus is on the Q3 Go-to-Market" can change the conversation from a personal decline to a strategic choice. This approach tends to preserve relationships because it signals that the decision is based on professional alignment, not a lack of interest.

Ultimately, this is a matter of Decision-Making. Senior roles inherently involve compromises. The ability to make a choice between what is "good" and what is "great" is a fundamental leadership skill.

When a leader says no to a secondary task, they are effectively protecting the time, energy and mental resources required for their most important work that’s aligned with the organization’s objectives.

There is also a middle ground between an immediate yes and a definitive no. When a request is ambiguous, a pause—or a "maybe"—can be a productive tool. It allows time to assess the situation and consider the impact on current work before making a final commitment.

Next Steps: Learning to balance these priorities is rarely intuitive. It requires a shift in mindset and a willingness to navigate the initial discomfort that comes with setting a boundary.  If you find yourself balancing these competing demands and are interested in exploring how to protect your focus without losing your influence, I am available for a confidential 1:1 conversation.

Leading High-Performing Teams

Sundbyberg, Sweden

“To lead people, walk behind them.” - Lao Tzu

What if you weren’t Surrounded by Idiots after all? What if everyone around you are some of the most brilliant minds you’ve come across?

Leading a team of high-performing, experienced individuals presents a set of challenges that are often quite different from traditional management. When every member of a team is smart, capable, and efficient, the typical hurdles—such as performance gaps or lack of motivation—rarely apply. Instead, the friction tends to be subtler. It often manifests as misalignment, unspoken tension, or a general sense that while everyone is working hard, they aren't necessarily pulling in the same direction.

Managing this kind of talent requires a shift in perspective. It is less about driving output and more about how that talent is positioned, stretched, and supported.

A recurring theme in teams with high-capability members is the tendency to assume that because everyone is skilled, they are aligned. However, friction often arises when roles and expectations are implied rather than stated.

As a result, Communication becomes vital. Clear communication at this level isn't about giving instructions; it’s about ensuring that each person understands exactly what they own and how their contributions connect to the larger goal. When roles are loosely defined to preserve harmony, overlap is inevitable. By articulating expectations explicitly, a leader can reduce ambiguity, which often allows the team's natural talent to resolve the existing tension.

Leading experts often involves a delicate balance between autonomy and structure. A common pitfall is the hesitation to make trade-offs between strong contributors. A leader might avoid defining strict responsibilities to prevent disruption or conflict, but this can inadvertently create the very friction they are trying to avoid.

TrueAccountabilityin this context involves setting clear standards and holding the bar consistently. High performers generally respect clarity far more than they fear pressure. By defining what success looks like for each role and maintaining that standard, a leader fosters a culture where responsibility is shared and understood. This isn't about being rigid; it is about providing the guardrails that allow high-capability people to do their best work without tripping over one another.

One of the paradoxes of leading top talent is that the very people who are most capable are also the most prone to stagnation if they aren't challenged. They may not always ask for new responsibilities, but they often require growth to remain engaged.

This is where the pillar ofAdaptability comes into play. It requires a leader to actively look for ways to stretch individuals—even when the team is performing well. Growth should ideally be integrated into the daily rhythm of work rather than treated as an external add-on. When a leader adapts their strategy to provide new, meaningful challenges, it helps prevent disengagement and demonstrates a commitment to the long-term success of the individual.

Leading a high-performing team is a demanding task that involves making difficult choices about where to focus, who takes on new opportunities, and when to address tension directly.

As a result, it requires the judgment to balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the organization, and the courage to hold the complexity that comes with managing strong personalities. While this work is challenging, it is often what distinguishes a solid team from a truly exceptional one.

Next Steps: If you are currently navigating these dynamics and looking to refine your approach to leading strong talent, this is the type of work I assist my clients with. I am available for a confidential 1:1 conversation if you would like to explore how these principles might apply to you or your current team.

Giving Feedback That Actually Lands

Copenhagen, Denmark

Many senior leaders operate under the assumption that they provide feedback frequently and clearly. Yet, a common frustration remains: team members hear the message, but behavior does not shift. When engagement falters or misalignment persists despite ongoing conversations, it usually points to a gap between the leader’s intent and the recipient’s ability to process and act on that feedback.

Data often confirms this disconnect. Research suggests that only a fraction of employees feel the feedback they receive actually aids their performance. This indicates that the problem is rarely a lack of effort, but rather how the feedback is delivered and framed.

Effective feedback is rarely abstract. It fails when it is vague, focusing on general outcomes rather than specific actions. To make feedback land, it must be rooted in observable behavior. When a leader says, "You need to be more decisive," the message is difficult to interpret. However, if that same leader says, "In the last three meetings, decisions were postponed without clear next steps," the feedback becomes concrete.

This is where precise Communication serves as the foundation. By anchoring the conversation in factual, observable events, the leader gives the recipient something tangible to reflect on. This reduces defensiveness, as the focus shifts from the person's character to the specific actions that can be changed.

Beyond the delivery, the effectiveness of feedback depends heavily on the leader’s own Self-Awareness. Often, feedback is framed as an evaluation, which naturally triggers a defensive response. If a leader can clarify their purpose before diving into the content—framing it as an observation meant to help the individual have more impact—the conversation transforms from something evaluative to something developmental.

When a leader understands the "why" behind their feedback and communicates it with that context, they help the recipient see that the goal is not criticism, but growth. This shift in perspective requires the leader to be conscious of their own tone and timing, ensuring the conversation feels collaborative rather than one-sided.

Finally, the timing of feedback is a matter of strategic Decision-Making. It is common for leaders to wait for formal check-ins or major reviews to address behavior. Yet, delayed feedback often makes the link between the behavior and the conversation feel abstract, which dilutes its impact.

Choosing to provide timely feedback, when delivered close to the event, sharpens insight and accelerates the learning process. It requires the courage to have honest conversations in real-time, rather than waiting for an opportune moment that may never feel "comfortable." Treating feedback as a consistent pattern, rather than a standalone event, builds accountability and signals that professional growth is a continuous priority.

Effective feedback is ultimately about increasing awareness and helping individuals make more informed choices. It is not about managing or controlling outcomes; it is about creating the clarity that allows others to improve.

Next Steps: This work is rarely intuitive. It requires the discipline to look past the discomfort, the clarity to focus on what matters, and the consistency to follow up. If you are navigating these dynamics and want to refine how you deliver feedback to strengthen your team’s capability, I assist leaders with this type of strategic development regularly. I am available for a 1:1 conversation if you would like to explore how these principles can be applied to your current leadership challenges.

Navigating Difficult Conversations

Nanjing, China

“Nothing is softer or more flexible than water, yet nothing can resist it.” -Lao Tzu

Intuitively, most leaders understand when a difficult conversation is overdue. I learned this lesson the hard way early in my career at Google, when I had to navigate a conflict with a senior sales leader who had consistently prioritized her own agenda over our upcoming product launch. The tension was palpable, yet everyone tiptoed around it, hoping it would simply resolve itself.

Most teams function this way. Sensing mounting tension, noticing missed expectations, and observing the misalignment in the team’s rhythm. Rather than addressing the issue directly, the common tendency is to work around the friction, carrying the discomfort privately in the hope that time will resolve the matter naturally.

This is a mistake. By delaying, you are not maintaining harmony; you are allowing frustration to harden into resentment.

Why do we avoid these conversations? It is often a byproduct of uncertainty. A leader fears that speaking up might escalate a manageable situation into a full-blown conflict. But there is a hidden paradox here: the most significant risk to your team’s performance is the silence surrounding it.

To break this cycle, you must stop treating these moments as confrontations and start treating them as strategic interventions.

1. Start with Self-Awareness

Before a conversation can happen, you need to audit your own perspective. Difficult conversations feel messy because the underlying issue is rarely defined with precision.

It is helpful to separate observable facts from personal interpretation. What specifically happened? What was the actual impact? By isolating the facts, you move away from emotional reaction and toward objective clarity. This internal work does not just prepare you to speak; it reduces the defensiveness that often arises when a conversation is fueled by assumptions rather than data.

2. Shift the Dynamic with Communication

Once the issue is clear, the way you introduce it matters immensely. Many conversations are doomed from the start because the other person feels blindsided or attacked.

Opening with a shared intent, such as, “I want to talk about this because I value how we work together and I believe we can have more impact” can shift the tone. It moves the dynamic from one of judgment to one of partnership.

Effective communication here also requires a commitment to specificity. Vagueness is the enemy of progress. When you connect an observation directly to a specific action—rather than a vague characterization—the recipient has something concrete to reflect on. This creates a dialogue, not a lecture. It invites the other person to share their perspective and participate in finding a path forward.

3. The Follow-Through: Accountability

The conversation itself is not the destination. In fact, the most critical phase often follows the discussion. Having a high degree of Accountability ensures that the talk translates into behavioral change.

Without clear, observable next steps, it is easy for both parties to drift back into old patterns. Ending the conversation by distilling the path forward into clear, actionable behaviors prevents confusion. Following up periodically to revisit that progress, acknowledge improvements, or adjust the plan signals that the issue was important enough to address and is essential to resolve.

Difficult conversations are not punitive. They are not personal. When handled with clarity and respect, they are simply a professional signal that something important deserves attention before it evolves into a crisis.

Next Steps: Navigating these dynamics takes practice, structure, and the willingness to engage with discomfort. If you are navigating a situation that requires a difficult conversation and you are interested in exploring how to approach it with clarity, I am available for a 1:1 conversation.

Best Practices for Executive Decision-Making

Copenhagen, Denmark

In Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” he writes about the sacrifices we make by choosing a path. 

By definition, leadership is a continuous exercise in choosing one path over another. For many, the volume of these choices can feel significant, but the real difficulty is the ambiguity that surrounds them. A technical expert might excel when the data is clear and the variables are known, but an executive is defined by how they operate when the information is incomplete, the compromises are significant, and the consequences ripple far beyond the immediate room.

A common pitfall is the tendency to seek more information than the decision actually requires, or to default to consensus-seeking as a way to spread the burden of risk. While well-intentioned, these habits can lead to inertia, where the cost of waiting eventually exceeds the cost of making the wrong choice.

One of the most valuable assets a leader can bring to the table is Self-Awareness. When a leader finds themselves convening large groups for every decision, it is often useful to pause and examine the underlying drive. Is the consensus truly necessary for the quality of the decision, or is it a protection mechanism against the discomfort of being the one to decide? By recognizing these patterns, a leader can clarify their own role, distinguish between who provides input and who holds decision rights, and regain the pace required for organizational momentum.

There is an important distinction between the data we use and the judgment we apply. Analytical rigor provides the foundation, but executive Decision-Making is ultimately about synthesizing that data in a way that aligns with the organization’s trajectory. Waiting for perfect data is often a luxury that senior roles do not afford; successful leaders learn to move forward with the information they have, while clearly naming the concessions involved. When those concessions are identified openly, teams can understand the logic behind the choice, which fosters commitment even when the decision itself is difficult.

A decision only creates value if it is understood by the people responsible for executing it. This is where Communication serves as the final, critical step. Clarity is often compromised when leaders focus only on the "what" without articulating the "why."

Using shared reference points, such as established OKRs or KPIs, can act as a powerful anchor. When a decision is explicitly framed against these goals, it shifts the conversation from personal preference to organizational impact. This doesn't replace the need for judgment, but it provides a common language that makes the rationale for the choice clear. When a leader communicates the decision with that context, they reduce the ambiguity that often causes rework and friction.

Strong executive decisions are durable, but they rarely need to be permanent. The most effective leaders create clarity where there was ambiguity, and they remain willing to revisit those decisions as conditions shift. This is not a sign of inconsistency; it is a signal of adaptability.

Next Steps: Decision-making is a practice. It improves as a leader becomes more intentional in exercising judgment in significant situations. This is the kind of work I assist my clients with. If you are navigating complex decisions and interested in exploring how to refine your own framework, I am available for a 1:1 conversation.