I got leadership wrong in 2024. That’s how I started a newsletter earlier this year that scared the hell out of me to publish. In this episode, I share what happened – and the high cost of indecision, fear, and people-pleasing. 

Today, I’m turning the mic on myself. I’m joined by psychologist and friend Sabina Read to unpack the personal and professional fallout of the hardest year I’ve had as a leader.  

From delaying redundancies to clinging to hope, to letting fear and likability steer my decisions – I share the choices I regret, what I learned from them, and how I’m showing up differently in 2025. 

Sabina and I discuss: 

• Why I refused to consider redundancies (and what it cost) 

• How fear, not strategy, drove my biggest decisions 

• The freeze response I didn’t realise I was stuck in 

• What my therapist told me that sent me into a spiral 

• How psychological safety broke down on my team – and what we do now to protect it 

• The cultural check-in we do every 6–8 weeks to catch small issues before they explode 

• Why listening deeply matters more than making the “right” decision 

• How I started letting go of the need to be liked 

Key Quotes 

• “Hope is not a strategy. But that’s what I was relying on.” 

• “I had a very high need to be liked—and that was making me a really bad manager.” 

• “You can’t rest on your laurels with culture. It takes conscious work.” 

Connect with Sabina via her website, Instagram, or check out her podcast Human Cogs.