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The way we work has changed dramatically. But has the way we lead kept pace? In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, I sit down with Jennifer Selby Long, founder and CEO of Selby Group, who has coached senior leaders and executive teams across organisations including Airbnb, LinkedIn, Cisco and Nestlé. Jennifer has spent years helping leaders navigate organisational transformation, rapid growth, acquisitions and the complex human dynamics that can make or break a leadership team. Together, they explore why organisational change often needs to begin with personal change, what happens when leaders become the biggest barriers to their own success, and why emotional intelligence is no longer a nice-to-have but a critical business capability. They also unpack what really happens behind closed doors in executive teams, the uncomfortable conversations leaders avoid, the everyday habits that build trust, and how to measure whether leadership coaching is actually making a difference. And as AI reshapes the workplace, Jennifer challenges us to consider what technology can do for leaders and what must remain fundamentally human. If the world of work is changing faster than our leadership behaviours, what needs to change first? Please enjoy this conversation. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why do good people sometimes become leaders they never intended to be? In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, I sit down with Preetie Boler, founder of Empowered by Design and creator of the Shiftcode™ methodology, to explore what really happens to our behaviour when pressure rises. Preetie’s work focuses on the gap between intention and impact - the space between the leader we believe we are and the leader other people actually experience. We talk about why capable leaders can become reactive or controlling under pressure, whether the accelerating pace of work is making leadership behaviour worse, and why organisations continue to promote technical excellence without paying enough attention to behavioural capability. We also explore Behavioural Intelligence, whether it can and should be measured, the hidden commercial cost of poor leadership behaviour, and why behaviour deserves a place alongside financial, operational and governance risk in the boardroom. And as AI and constant connectivity reshape the workplace, we ask an increasingly important question: are leaders becoming so busy responding that they are losing the space required for reflection and self-awareness? Perhaps the biggest question of all is whether people can genuinely change. Can a leader who has behaved a certain way for decades reinvent how they lead, or does pressure simply reveal the patterns that were there all along? This is a conversation about leadership beyond titles, frameworks and good intentions. It is about how we show up when things get hard, because ultimately, that is the leadership the people around us experience. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does Olympic-level performance teach us about leading people through pressure? Drew Ginn OAM is a three-time Olympic gold medallist, a member of Australia’s legendary Oarsome Foursome and now General Manager of Marshall White Bayside. In this conversation, Drew takes us behind the medals to explore the trust, honesty and discipline required to build a team capable of performing when the stakes are high. Drew reflects on joining an already successful Olympic crew at just 21 and questioning whether he was good enough to belong. He shares how the team practised difficult conversations before they reached breaking point, why immediate feedback matters and what leaders can learn from people who understand that discomfort is part of growth. We also explore the difference between sustainable performance and expecting people to operate at 100 per cent every day. Drew explains why recovery is not a reward for finishing the work, but part of the work itself. He discusses how leaders can remain steady while their people experience the inevitable highs and lows of performance, and why knowing when to challenge someone and when to support them is a critical leadership skill. The conversation also examines resilience, reinvention, coaching and the loneliness that can come with leadership. Drew shares why culture cannot sit with one person, why everyone must become a culture keeper, and what changes when leaders move beyond their own success and take responsibility for the performance of the whole team. Originally recorded for Behind the Numbers ahead of Drew’s appearance at the RISE Leadership Breakfast, this is a practical and deeply human conversation about leading under pressure without losing sight of the people beside you. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When people struggle at work, organisations often respond by trying to make them more resilient. But what if the problem is not the person? What if it is the way the work has been designed? In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, Sadhana Smiles is joined by organisational psychologist Dr Kat Page, author of Good Work: Transform Your Work from the Inside Out. Drawing on almost two decades of research, Kat challenges leaders to look beyond wellbeing programs and examine the systems shaping people’s daily experience of work. She explains why resilience should not be used to help people tolerate preventable dysfunction, and how load, latitude, love and leadership can create healthier, more sustainable workplaces. Kat also shares how being made redundant forced her to confront how closely her identity had become tied to her career, and how reconnecting with her values helped her redesign her own relationship with work. Together, Sadhana and Kat explore whether performance should be measured through energy rather than hours, why psychosocial safety risks becoming another compliance exercise, and who should benefit when AI gives us time back. Because good work is not simply about preventing burnout. It is about creating workplaces where people have agency, feel that they matter and can perform without sacrificing their health to do it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if positive thinking isn’t always the answer? In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, Sadhana Smiles sits down with speaker and author Chris Helder for a wide-ranging conversation about the beliefs we carry, the stories we tell ourselves and how both shape the way we live and lead. Chris shares his concept of Useful Belief, a practical alternative to forced positivity. When circumstances are difficult or outside our control, the question becomes: what is the most useful belief I can choose right now? They explore Chris’s GOGI philosophy - guilt out, gratitude in, controlling the controllables, authenticity, influence and why leaders need to become more comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” They also discuss designing a life for excellence across work, family, health, friendships and self, rather than allowing success in one area to come at the expense of everything else. Chris also opens up about how his understanding of resilience has changed, his own struggle with feeling “enough”, and why reaching the top of one ladder led him to choose a new one centred on helping people. A thoughtful, funny and deeply human conversation about mindset, uncertainty, resilience and one deceptively simple idea: we may not control what happens next, but we can be intentional about the story we tell ourselves about it. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What if the biggest leadership problem isn’t your people, but the system they’re working within? In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, Sadhana Smiles speaks with engineer, entrepreneur, author and founder of five businesses Felicity Furey about what it means to design leadership for impact. Felicity shares how being one of the few women in engineering shaped her early career, why she once hesitated to put her hand up despite managing $45 million worth of projects at just 23, and how one decision to step forward ultimately changed the direction of her career. They explore why culture is revealed through everyday behaviours, how workplace systems can unintentionally create barriers to performance and belonging, and why leaders need to understand people's individual strengths rather than make assumptions about what motivates them. The conversation also turns to AI, our growing obsession with speed and the human capabilities Felicity believes we cannot afford to lose: judgement, curiosity, imagination, relationships and genuine care. And ultimately, Felicity poses a bigger challenge for leaders: what if we moved beyond measuring productivity and started measuring impact? Impact on the business. Impact on people. Impact on communities. And impact on what we leave behind. A thoughtful conversation about systems, belonging, AI, legacy and designing a more human future of leadership. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Domestic violence is not a fringe issue. It is not a private matter. And it is not someone else’s problem. In this episode, I sit down with family lawyer Cassandra Kalpaxis for a direct and deeply confronting conversation about domestic and family violence in Australia. Cassandra shares that in her practice, around 95 percent of her cases now involve domestic violence. Not always physical. Often invisible. Coercive control. Financial abuse. Psychological harm that slowly strips away identity and autonomy. We discuss the warning signs many people miss, what meaningful support actually looks like, and why pressure can push survivors further into danger rather than towards safety. We explore where our systems are falling short, from policing to prevention, and the accountability that sits not just with government, but with workplaces, leaders, communities and men. As International Women’s Day calls us to Balance the Scale, this episode asks a harder question. Where are we still failing? And what responsibility do we each carry to change it? If you need support, confidential help is available through 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Leadership is often measured by what we build: the business, the team, the results and the growth. But Kenny Lange believes there is a more important question leaders need to ask: Who are you becoming while you build it? Kenny is a leadership and scaling coach, entrepreneur and host of How Leaders Think. His path to coaching came through experience rather than theory. After being let go twice in four months, he started a digital agency almost by accident, grew it into a successful business and eventually sold it. He then helped the acquiring company nearly double its revenue while expanding its workforce across six US states and four countries. In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, we talk about what happens when founders become the "chief everything officer", why scaling requires leaders to surrender some of the things that made them successful in the first place, and why self-awareness needs to come before strategy, systems and accountability. Kenny also shares the deeply personal story behind his commitment to fostering and adoption. Together with his wife, he has fostered 18 children and adopted two, alongside their three biological children. That experience has shaped his understanding of vulnerability, responsibility and what it means to use leadership in service of something bigger than yourself. This is a conversation about business growth, identity and the inner work of leadership. Because sometimes the biggest challenge in scaling an organisation isn't what needs to change in the business. It's what needs to change in the leader. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when highly capable people can solve complex problems but struggle with tasks the workplace considers simple? In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, I speak with executive coach Frankie Berkoben about neurodiversity, executive functioning and what leaders misunderstand about people who think differently. Frankie’s own career has crossed geology, engineering, product and program management, endurance cycling and executive coaching. Following her experience of burnout and a later ADHD diagnosis, she began to recognise that many talented people spend years believing they are inconsistent, unfocused or somehow broken, when the real issue may be the fit between the individual and the system around them. Frankie explains why systems thinking, pattern recognition and intuition can be significant leadership strengths, even when traditional workplace structures fail to recognise them. She also explores the shame created when people are repeatedly told they are too much or not enough, and the impact this can have on identity, confidence and belonging. The conversation moves beyond diagnosis. Stress, uncertainty, overload and constant context switching can affect executive functioning in any of us. Frankie and Sadhana discuss what neuro-inclusion looks like in practice, why psychological safety requires more than a policy, and how small changes to meetings, communication and work design can help different minds perform at their best. This is a conversation about building workplaces around humans, rather than expecting every human to fit the same system. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What does it take to build a career that spans some of the world's biggest technology companies before launching your own AI start-up? For Anya Cheng, it wasn't a perfectly mapped career plan. It was curiosity, resilience and an unwillingness to accept the first "no." Born and raised in Taiwan, Anya arrived in the United States with little more than a marketing degree, limited English, and no professional network. Finding work after graduating during the Global Financial Crisis meant knocking on countless doors, creating opportunities where none existed, and refusing to let rejection define her future. That determination led to leadership roles at Target, Facebook, eBay and McDonald's, where she helped shape global digital products, launch Facebook and Instagram Shopping, expand e-commerce, and rethink customer experiences at scale. Today, she's the founder and CEO of Taelor, an AI-powered platform transforming how men discover, rent and buy clothing while helping fashion brands reduce waste through real-time customer insights. In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, Anya shares why curiosity has been the greatest driver of her career, why the best leaders stop thinking about their job title and start solving problems, and how every setback became an opportunity to think differently. Whether you're leading a team, building a business or navigating your own career, this conversation is a reminder that extraordinary opportunities rarely begin with certainty. They begin with asking better questions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Technology is changing faster than leadership. As AI reshapes the way we work, many organisations are focused on becoming more efficient. But what if they're asking the wrong question? In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, I sit down with executive coach and former Google Ventures leader Maximos Lih for a thoughtful conversation about what leadership looks like when AI does more of the thinking, and why the future belongs to leaders who become more human, not less. Maximos shares the remarkable story of his grandfather, an orphan who taught himself to read before rising to become a four-star general, and the leadership lesson that has shaped his entire career: great leaders are remembered not for the positions they hold, but for the lives they change. Drawing on years of coaching founders and high-growth companies, Maximos explains why leaders become the bottleneck in their own organisations, why start-ups should think more like Olympic teams than championship teams, and why copying companies like Google often leads businesses down the wrong path. Together, we explore why trust, storytelling, imagination and clarity will become the defining leadership capabilities of the next decade, why AI should free people to do more meaningful work rather than simply make them more productive, and why the most important question every leader should ask is not "What can AI do?" but "What can only humans do?" If you're leading people through growth, change or uncertainty, this conversation will challenge the way you think about leadership and leave you with a simple but powerful reminder: the future may be powered by AI, but it will still belong to leaders who know how to bring out the very best in people. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For years, the debate around working from home has centred on one question: where should people work? But perhaps we've been asking the wrong question all along. As Victoria moves to legislate new work-from-home rights, the conversation has shifted beyond organisational policy and into public policy. Supporters say the changes protect flexibility and improve work-life balance. Critics argue they risk removing the very flexibility they are designed to create. In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, I sit down with leadership and organisational change expert Karen Ferris to explore what these changes really mean for leaders, businesses and employees. Together we unpack whether flexibility can or should be legislated, the unintended consequences of a one-size-fits-all approach, and why the future of work is ultimately a leadership conversation rather than a workplace policy debate. They also explore what the best organisations have learned since the pandemic, why trust has become one of the most valuable currencies in leadership, how hybrid work has exposed both great and poor leadership, and what leaders need to do to build culture, connection and accountability when work no longer happens in one place. Whether you lead a team, run a business or are simply trying to navigate the changing world of work, this conversation offers practical insights into leading with trust, creating genuine flexibility and building workplaces where both people and performance can thrive. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Leadership today isn't just about managing people. It's about understanding people. In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, I am joined by global leadership and intercultural expert Monika Guzek, who has worked with leaders across more than 60 countries helping organisations navigate the complexity of diverse teams, cultural intelligence and human behaviour. Growing up in Poland during a period of extraordinary social and economic transformation shaped Monika's view of change, resilience and ambition. Since then, her career has taken her across Europe and Asia, giving her a rare perspective on what great leadership looks like across cultures and, perhaps more importantly, what it doesn't. We explore why relationships matter more than hierarchy, how curiosity has become one of the most valuable leadership skills, and why leaders often underestimate the impact their own behaviour has on those around them. Monika also shares her personal experience with burnout, the lessons she learned about slowing down, and why finding joy, both inside and outside work, is essential for sustainable leadership. This conversation is a reminder that while cultures, languages and workplaces may differ around the world, people share many of the same needs: to be heard, understood and trusted. For leaders navigating an increasingly global, fast-moving and diverse world, these insights have never been more relevant. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are we measuring success in a way that's actually holding innovation back? For decades, organisations have relied on goals, KPIs and OKRs to drive performance. But what if those very frameworks are encouraging short-term thinking at the expense of long-term innovation? In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, I sit down with MIT-trained engineer, entrepreneur and Radical Product Thinking author Radhika Dutt, whose work is challenging the way leaders think about product management, leadership strategy, innovation and organisational culture. Radhika introduces a powerful alternative to traditional OKRs through her Objectives, Hypotheses and Learnings (OHL) framework, explaining why great organisations create environments where experimentation, curiosity and learning matter just as much as results. We explore her concept of "vision debt," why many businesses lose sight of their purpose while chasing metrics, and how leaders can build strategies that stand the test of time. Our conversation also tackles one of today's biggest leadership questions: how AI is changing decision making. Radhika explains why artificial intelligence should enhance human judgement, not replace it, and why leaders who become overly dependent on data and optimisation risk creating products that perform well on paper but fail the people they're designed to serve. Whether you're leading a business, building products, managing teams or navigating the future of work, this episode offers practical insights into creating high-performing organisations that balance commercial success with curiosity, adaptability and meaningful impact. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is AI making us more productive... or quietly making us worse leaders? As artificial intelligence transforms the way we work, most of the conversation has focused on efficiency. But what if we're asking the wrong question? In this episode of Future Fit Leadership, I sit down with behavioural scientist, leadership researcher and author Penny Locaso to explore one of the biggest leadership challenges of our time: how do we remain deeply human in a world that's becoming increasingly automated? Drawing on her latest research, The Compassion Advantage, Penny shares why leadership capability is becoming the greatest constraint on organisational performance, why trust is replacing authority as the new source of influence, and how relentless pace is quietly eroding our ability to think clearly, make sound decisions and lead with care. Together, we unpack the concept of the "thinking recession", the hidden risks of outsourcing judgement to AI, and why leaders must be careful not to trade wisdom for speed. The conversation also explores why compassion is not a soft skill but a strategic capability, how purpose helps leaders navigate complexity, and what organisations need to change if they want leadership to thrive in an AI-shaped future. This is a conversation about more than technology. It's about the choices we make every day, the behaviours we reward, and the kind of leaders we're becoming. If you've ever wondered whether we're moving too fast to think, too busy to connect, or too quick to let technology make decisions that require human judgement, this episode is for you. Please enjoy this conversation. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.