STYLE & STRATEGY HUB

You're ready for more than where you're at. It might have arrived with a promotion, a birthday with a nought on the end, or the ordinary week you realised you'd outgrown the role you're in. What you do with that readiness is a leadership presence question, and almost everyone answers it the same way...

You've had the review. Highly capable. Reliable. A great team player, an expert at what you do. Rave reviews on all fronts, and then one line at the end that doesn't sit with the rest of it: not strategic enough.

No one in the room explains what that means. You ask, and you get examples of what str...

You had the read early in the meeting. The recommendation that went out had fewer edges and one more caveat than the one you'd written in your head, and nothing about that looks like a leadership presence problem.

Leaders in this position tend to call it tiredness and put it down to the volume of w...

Nothing on a photo shoot starts with the clothes. A brief arrives first. Someone has decided what the day is about, and every choice made after that point answers to it.

The same goes for a project, or the way you execute well on strategy. There’s a vision, a strategy, and then a plan, and you exec...

There is an outfit in your wardrobe that makes you feel completely like yourself. You have worn it three times.

It waits at the end of the rail for a room important enough to justify it. Everything else in your week runs on what is appropriate.

Leaders who have been promoted for their judgement te...