When senior leadership teams struggle, it is rarely about open conflict
More often, it is because what's important is not talked about openly. Meetings remain polite and professional, but difficult issues are avioded.
Decisions are made, yet they are not always fully owned, and familiar issues keep popping up in different forms.
Outwardly, the team appears capable and aligned. In private, however, leaders often sense that something is not quite working, even though the strategy is sound and the people involved are experienced.
Leadership Coach
Clinical Psychologist
Author of The Saboteur at Work &
The Emotional Life of Organisations
When people do not talk
about problems, they
usually get worse
At senior level, silence is often taken as agreement. Work carries on, meetings get done, and because nothing obviously breaks, the lack of challenge is easy to miss and uncomfortable to address.
People often hold back from speaking openly. Disagreements are quietly weighed up, concerns about how dissent might be received remain unspoken, and conversations shift to corridors or coffee machines, while the team gradually learns to work around problems rather than deal with them together.
Over time, this has a cumulative effect. Decisions slow, trust weakens, and leaders carry an increasing emotional and cognitive load, which shapes how they think, judge, and lead.
Leaders carry more emotional and mental load than necessary, and this gradually affects how they think and lead.
A thinking partner for senior leadership teams
I work with senior leaders, boards, and executive teams at exactly these points.
I help leadership teams understand what is really going on, so they can think together more clearly, talk about what they have been avoiding, and reintroduce constructive challenge without
undermining relationships or authority.
I do not focus on motivation, tools, or performance techniques. I focus on how senior people actually think and speak under pressure, and on creating the conditions in which they can make better decisions together.
Experience and background
I am a leadership coach and clinical psychologist with more than 20 years’ experience supporting senior leaders and executive teams.
I coach and teach on leadership programmes at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and advise organisations across financial services, professional services, technology, media, and the public sector on leadership, culture, and decision making under pressure.
I am also the author of five commercially published books on organisational psychology and leadership, including The Saboteur at Work and The Emotional Life of Organisations.
Working where leadership judgement really matters
JD Polk
Chief Health & Medical Officer NASA
"Leadership in politically complex environments exposes bias, habit, and unexamined assumptions very quickly. Mike helped me get out of my own way, probing to the heart of the matter and challenging how I thought about my goals, my biases, and the obstacles I was facing, some of which were of my own making."
Jan Lubbe
Chief Risk Officer
Momentum Group
"Sometimes you come across someone who has a profound impact on your career. Being coached by Mike during the Oxford Advanced Management and Leadership Programme changed how I thought about myself as a leader and helped me see beyond the role I was performing."
Nick Haigh ACMA CGMA
Finance Director
Marshalls plc
"After seeing Mike speak at a CIMA event, I asked him to work with a cohort of emerging leaders. Each person took something different from the session, and the subsequent debrief surfaced insights that would have been missed by an untrained eye. His impact was felt both by the group and by me personally."
