Podcasts · Business

No Bullsh!t Leadership

Martin G Moore

300 episodes

No Bullsh!t Leadership is a podcast for leaders who want to become truly exceptional. Each week, your host, Wall Street Journal Bestselling author Martin G Moore, shares the secrets of high performance leadership; the career accelerators that you can’t learn in business school, and your boss is unlikely to share with you. Step away from the theoretical view on leadership, and learn from a successful CEO who’s already walked the path.

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Episodes page 1 of 6

  1. How to Set KPIs That Drive the Right Behaviour: 6 Rules

    · 17 min · S1 E431

    If you put a bounty on dead cobras, you may end up with more live cobras. And if you attach a big bonus to a KPI, you’ll get the same outcome in your business. If they’re not chosen carefully, KPIs can do more harm…

  2. Maximising ROI From Your Top Talent | Moment 196

    · 4:39

    Imagine if one of your people was delivering more value than eight of their peers: leading them the same way you lead everyone else would be a complete waste. I’ve often said, “Your high performers don’t give you 10%…

  3. How To Speak Up In High-Powered Meetings

    · 17 min · S1 E430

    How many times have you sat in a room full of senior people, thinking about making a great point, but never actually speaking up? In this episode, I show you how to take that step without sounding arrogant, making it…

  4. 4 Signs You’re Working for a Weak Leader | Moment 195

    · 4:30

    If your workload is out of control, your best people are leaving, and you feel alone and unsupported, it might be that you're working for a weak leader. In this Moment, I give you four telltale signs to look for, and…

  5. What the Best CEOs Do Differently: 8 Lessons From 8 Years of CEO Mentoring

    · 23 min · S1 E429

    You never know what to expect when mentoring CEOs. Some run the most boring businesses you could imagine, but they generate enormous value. Other companies may seem sexy on the outside, but struggle to make ends meet.…

  6. 3 Tips for Difficult Conversations: Stop Bargaining With Yourself | Moment 194

    · 4:23

    In leadership, difficult conversations come with the territory. So, if your goal is to make everyone happy… go work in a donut shop! If you want a career that lives up to your potential then, paradoxically, your…

  7. How to Prioritise as a Leader: 7 Ways to Stop Doing Too Much

    · 23 min · S1 E428

    The hardest thing I ever tried to do as an executive was to stop the sh!t that had already started: it gets a life of its own. On top of that, new work is being dreamt up all the time, further adding to your…

  8. Be Clear With Your People... For THEIR Sake | Moment 193

    · 4:37

    When was the last time you told one of your people exactly where they stood? If you can't remember, this Moment's for you. Your people deserve the truth, even when it's the last thing they want to hear… and the last…

  9. Why Transformations Fail: 5 Reasons, and 3 Ways to Cope When It's Done to You

    · 17 min · S1 E427

    Most transformations don't transform all that much. They cost a lot of money, they suck a huge amount of the organisation's time and energy, and no one really checks to see if the benefits were ever delivered. If…

  10. How to Fix a Team Performance Slump: 3 Cracks to Check First | Moment 192

    · 3:51

    You may think that rolling up your sleeves and doing your team’s work is leading from the front. But it’s actually a bad habit that’s diluting your people’s capability. Every time you get involved in the nitty gritty…

  11. 5 Reasons Why One-on-Ones Are Your Secret Weapon

    · 20 min · S1 E425

    Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky says he doesn't believe in one-on-ones. I couldn’t disagree more, so in this episode I show you why sometimes, even the best CEOs get this one wrong. Chesky says the 1:1 model is flawed. Not…

  12. Leaders, Should You Roll Your Sleeves Up? | Moment 191

    · 4:02

    You may think that rolling up your sleeves and doing your team’s work is leading from the front. But it’s actually a bad habit that’s diluting your people’s capability. Every time you get involved in the nitty gritty…

  13. Business Acumen vs Leadership: Which One Drives Performance?

    · 21 min · S1 E425

    During my tenure as CEO at CS Energy, we took EBITDA from $17m to $441m: we more than doubled the company’s earnings for four consecutive years. Along the way, I had to dig deep into two distinct toolkits: my business…

  14. Power Doesn't Corrupt: It Reveals | Moment 190

    · 4:17

    Some leaders remain uncorrupted, despite the fact that they move into increasingly powerful positions. But there are others who, at every turn, leverage whatever power they have to further their own self-interest. A…

  15. How To Give Great Feedback | Moment 189

    · 4:17

    Your ability to give quality feedback is one of the biggest predictors of leadership success. But many leaders never master the art of difficult conversations. Like many things in leadership, business, and life,…

  16. How to Stay Calm Under Pressure: 6 Signs Your Team Knows

    · 15 min · S1 E424

    You may think that you’re highly resilient, an expert at staying calm under pressure… but your team could be experiencing something completely different. They're the ones who see your lack of composure. If you panic,…

  17. How to Make Decisions Faster: 6 Signs They're Waiting on You

    · 9:05 · S1 E423

    When you hesitate on an important decision, it’s rarely due to missing data or insufficient consultation. It's more likely because you're afraid of getting it wrong. And as long as you delay, your people have to wait.…

  18. How to Lead in Uncertainty: 6 Signs Your Team Is Frozen

    · 11 min · S1 E422

    One of your critical jobs as a leader is to absorb the ambiguity that you’re facing, and turn that into certainty for your people. If you can’t do that, your team will freeze; and a frozen team just looks like an…

  19. How to Focus Your Team on Value: 6 Signs They're Just Busy

    · 14 min · S1 E421

    When you reward long hours, instead of rewarding the results that make a difference, you're paying for effort instead of value. You can't hold someone accountable for delivery, when you've never told them what's worth…

  20. How to Stop Doing Your Team's Job: 6 Signs You're in the Weeds

    · 12 min · S1 E420

    When you rewrite one of your people's reports at 9pm, you're not just compensating for their weakness. You're reinforcing it. That report was their chance to learn how to do it properly. You took it on because you…

  21. How to Stop Avoiding Difficult Conversations: 6 Signs It's You

    · 17 min · S1 E419

    When you have an underperformer on your team, but you haven’t given them specific performance feedback, you're reinforcing their underperformance. They may think that no news is good news, and they don’t need to do…

  22. How to Hold Your Team Accountable: 6 Signs Nobody Owns Anything

    · 14 min · S1 E418

    Somewhere on your team right now there's a person who isn't delivering. You thought of their name before you got to the end of that sentence. Over the next seven days, I'm going to show you they're probably not your…

  23. Stop Taking the Pressure Home: 3 Ways to Compartmentalise | Moment 188

    · 4:05

    When you feel swamped and overwhelmed, it’s easy to go home and kick the cat. But if you learn to compartmentalise, you’ll find it much easier to leave the stress of work at work (and vice versa). In this Moment, I…

  24. How to Build a Team That Performs Without You: 16 Real Questions

    · 33 min · S1 E417

    We asked 800 leaders one question. What's actually hard about leadership right now? The answers were so good we decided to answer them live. No prep. No script. Em fires the questions, and I get two minutes on each.…

  25. How Do You Lead Your Old Team Mates? | Moment 187

    · 4:20

    Being promoted to a new leadership level is a difficult transition to make. But it’s even tougher when you’re promoted to lead the team you used to be part of. The biggest trap is that you might take the culture, the…

  26. Your Ultimate Talent Identification Checklist

    · 19 min · S1 E416

    Every time you fill a vacancy, you have to make a choice: do you promote someone from within, who you may know quite well, or take a punt on someone you don’t? Over my corporate career, I made both calls frequently.…

  27. Will You Choose to Accept the Cost of Leadership? | Moment 186

    · 4:04

    There are three costs of leadership that nobody tells you about when you get promoted; and they are a given. You can no more change them than you can avoid the pull of gravity. The best leaders accept these truths.…

  28. 3 Mindset Shifts When You're Unhappy At Work

    · 15 min · S1 E415

    When leaders are unhappy at work, they often blame the company. But more often it’s a sign of dissatisfaction with their own inability to work within the constraints of the job. No job is perfect. Every role comes…

  29. Better Decisions, Faster: Why Consensus Slows Your Team | Moment 185

    · 4:32

    Speed can be a performance multiplier, if you can build it into your culture. But there are going to be times when you need to back off… and part of being a great leader is recognising those times. If you want to…

  30. 12 Execution Breakthroughs for Leading Leaders

    · 33 min · S1 E414

    If you're leading leaders, accountability is the first thing that breaks. You're not overloaded. You just rely too much on your own individual brilliance to get results. Until you learn to lead your leaders better,…

  31. How to Build a No Blame, No Excuses Culture | Moment 184

    · 4:32

    McLaren won back-to-back F1 championships when the CEO replaced victimhood and blame with a culture that guaranteed top shelf performance. That wasn’t luck. He made deliberate decisions… hard decisions… that changed…

  32. Stop Solving Your Team's Problems: 6 Ways to Execute Like Elon

    · 20 min · S1 E413

    If you look at the spectacular results that Tesla has achieved as a business, it might entice you to try to emulate Elon Musk’s leadership approach. But that would most likely be disastrous. People love to romanticise…

  33. 3 Timeless Principles of Success in 4 Minutes | Moment 183

    · 4:47

    There are 3 success principles that are particularly relevant for the new world we’re leading in. And they have nothing to do with luck, talent, or connections! As labour markets change in the coming years on the back…

  34. 5 Ways To Align People's Pay With Their Value

    · 20 min · S1 E412

    Can you explain clearly why the people on your team are paid what they're being paid? If you can't, you may have a hidden problem eating away at your meritocracy. We've produced a few episodes over the years on…

  35. Do You Understand Your Team's Psychological Contract? | Moment 182

    · 4:24

    The psychological contract is the mutual understanding between an employer and employee about their respective obligations to each other. There are no rules for these contracts: they’re based purely on people's…

  36. Stop Rescuing Underperformers: How to Make Consequences Stick

    · 27 min · S1 E411

    Underperformers don't change because you ask them nicely. They only change when they can no longer avoid the consequences of not delivering. Every time you swoop in and rescue someone, you’re filling that performance…

  37. How to Get More From Your 1:1 Meetings | Moment 181

    · 3:59

    As a corporate executive and CEO, the 1:1 meeting was the single most powerful weapon I had in my leadership arsenal. It was here that I mobilised my direct reports to excel. But even with that focus, I still left a…

  38. The 2 Hardest Conversations You'll Have With Your Top Talent

    · 17 min · S1 E410

    Your top talent doesn't always quit because they're unhappy. Often, they simply can’t see what their next move is. And if that’s the case, it’s not their fault: it’s yours! Every leader I talk to at the moment is…

  39. How to Eliminate Hiring Mistakes | Moment 180

    · 3:58

    Most job interviews are just friendly chats. They don’t provide any real due diligence. Making the right hiring choice requires a lot more than résumés and reference checks. Even personality profiling has limited…

  40. Meetings: When to speak, when to listen

    · 19 min · S1 E409

    Meetings can be a political minefield, and most leaders rely purely on their instinct to get by: which means they get it wrong more often than they realise. This episode cuts through the noise on one of the most…

  41. Why You Keep Avoiding the Hard Conversation | Moment 179

    · 4:32

    Leadership might be hard, but there’s nothing you can’t master with application and discipline. This is why the toughest challenge is often just convincing yourself to start. In this Moment, I show you exactly how to…

  42. The Real Reason Your Team Moves So Slowly

    · 16 min · S1 E408

    When we think about high-performing teams, we assume they have superior strategies and top-class talent. But one characteristic we often overlook is pace. And pace doesn’t happen organically: it takes a leader to build…

  43. Team Building Exercises Are Useless. Do This Instead | Moment 178

    · 4:35

    Team building exercises don’t build teams. Only leadership does. If you’re thinking about investing in time away from the office, think again. These days don’t move the needle on team dynamics, trust, or performance.…

  44. AI for Leaders in 2026: Promoted or Replaced?

    · 51 min · S1 E407

    Have you ever sat in a meeting about AI, nodded along, then thought, "I've got no idea what they're talking about, and I'm meant to be leading this"? If so, you're in good company. In this episode, I chat with Em and…

  45. Stop Disempowering Your People | Moment 177

    · 4:23

    Virtually every leader likes to talk about empowering their team. But if you were to ask 10 of them what empowerment actually means, you’d get 11 different answers. Over the years, the concept of empowerment has been…

  46. Dealing With an Employee You “Can't” Fire: 2 questions every leader needs to ask

    · 38 min · S1 E406

    Talented jerks and people who game the system just need to go. The value they bring through their technical skill is massively outweighed by the damage they do to the rest of the team. You can't motivate them. You…

  47. How to Stop Losing Your Most Talented People | Moment 176

    · 4:02

    Your best people know they have plenty of options, so if they don’t feel the work they’re doing is valuable, challenging, and impactful, it doesn't matter how much you pay them. In this Moment, I give you 5 things you…

  48. Nailing Your Formal Performance Review

    · 17 min · S1 E405

    Most leaders DREAD the formal performance review; because they don’t prepare and they don’t know what to expect. Today I go deep on how to control the dialogue, so that your review becomes a career accelerator, rather…

  49. Empathy Without Weakness: How Strong Leaders Care | Moment 175

    · 4:46

    Empathy is a critical leadership capability: without it, you’ll never get the best out of your people. But if you’re not strong enough to hold the standard, that empathy will blow up in your face. Empathy builds…

  50. 8 Surprising Ways to Reduce Unwanted Turnover

    · 21 min · S1 E404

    Most leaders think high turnover is a retention problem. But it’s not; it's a leadership problem. And the fix is the exact opposite of what most leaders do. Staff turnover is still widely misunderstood. And most…

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