Why good leaders go off track - A People Soup special #1

About this episode

This episode explores why good leaders may act against their better judgment under pressure and introduces a leadership framework to address these behaviors.

Why do good people do things they later regret? It's a question that's fascinated me for years. Before I became a coach, studied organisational psychology, or discovered Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), I spent years in HR leadership. One of my roles was leading the Conduct and Discipline Team in a large government department in the UK Civil Service. In that job I became increasingly curious about what really drives human behaviour. In this special solo episode, I share my working hypothesis about leadership: Under pressure, leaders often default to behaviours designed to reduce discomfort rather than create impact. I explore six common patterns of psychologically inflexible leadership and introduce my leadership framework, built around three core skills topped and tailed by the Pause and the Review Loop: Pause Awareness Authentic Action Adaptability and the Review Loop. Along the way, I share stories from my own leadership journey, including: What I learned from conduct and discipline cases A memorable disagreement with a tech startup founder about the value of pausing The conversation with my husband that changed what I paid attention to Lessons from coaching senior…

People in this episode

Host: People Soup

Topics covered

• leadership
• human behavior
• psychological flexibility
• coaching
• authenticity
• pressure management

Keywords

• leadership
• psychological inflexibility
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
• coaching
• authenticity
• human behavior

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: UK Civil Service, tech startup

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