About this episode

Paul Adamson discusses practical leadership lessons learned from his experiences in sailing and business.

Most people overcomplicate leadership. They're looking for the next framework, trying to do technical leadership that just doesn't work. Paul Adamson spent 25 years sailing yachts around the world—including two years circumnavigating with Eddie Jordan on an Oyster 885—and he learned that leadership isn't about theory. It's about making decisions without all the information, leading from the front, and remaining calm when the pressure is on. Then he walked into Oyster Yachts (the manufacturer of those luxury yachts) when it went into administration, won it out of admin by deliberately breaking the rules, and rebuilt it from zero to a £200M order book with 700 employees in four years. In this episode, Paul reveals why great leaders are energy-rich (not uninspiring boring managers), why you can't KPI great leadership, and why the three levers of state management—focus, inner dialogue, and movement—underpin everything in business. He shares his Virgin Atlantic story about blagging a gold card, getting upgraded to upper class by a flight manager who knew when to break the rules, and how copying Richard Branson into an Instagram post led to a phone call that changed everything. He also…

People in this episode

Host: Dominic Monkhouse

Guest: Paul Adamson

Topics covered

• leadership
• decision making
• business management
• personal health
• entrepreneurship

Keywords

• leadership
• business
• Oyster Yachts
• decision making
• health challenge
• entrepreneurship
• KPI

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Oyster Yachts, Virgin Atlantic

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