Late Night Leadership

You know you say yes to too much, or go quiet, or get short with people in a certain kind of meeting, and you’ve probably known for years, and yet the minute the pressure’s on, there you are doing it again. In this embodied leadership special, Maddie (who trained in the Strozzi approach) explains it to Kate as if she were a sceptical finance director: why self-awareness only gets you so far, what your body picks up before your brain catches up, and what it takes to respond differently when it counts.
In this episode
Why the habits that trip us up under pressure were often clever responses to the places we grew up in, and why that makes them so hard to shift
Fight, flight, freeze and appease, and Kate’s old boss’s “plateau of apathy”
Early warning signs in the body, from raised shoulders to a tight jaw, and how to find where you hold tension if you can’t feel it yet
Sigal Barsade’s emotional contagion study, where one actor shifted the mood of a whole group without anyone noticing where it came from
Why three deep breaths in the middle of a crisis rarely work, and what practising somewhere low-stakes (Euston Station, in Maddie’s case) gives you instead
Try thisPick one transition you make most days: between video calls, before a 1:1, or on the way to the school gates. Before you go in, take a minute to feel your feet on the floor, lengthen your spine, soften your shoulders, let your jaw go and take a couple of breaths low into your belly. Notice what you’re carrying in from the last thing, whether that’s urgency, tension or distraction, and if it helps, clench your fists or hike your shoulders up hard and then let them go. Then ask yourself what you want to bring to the next conversation. Do it on the days when nothing is on fire, so it’s there for the days when something is. And have a reason in mind that matters to you, because “for the sake of what?” will keep you going for longer than willpower will.
Over to youEuston Station is where every bit of Maddie tenses up and she’s ready to shoulder her way through the crowd. Where’s yours? Tell us the everyday, low-stakes place that winds you up and could double as your practice ground. Write to us at hello@latenightleadership.com.
Research and resources
Richard Strozzi-Heckler, The Leadership Dojo (2007) and The Anatomy of Change (1984). The approach Maddie trained in, and the source of the idea that it takes around 300 repetitions to build muscle memory and 3,000 to embody a change. That’s a practitioner’s rule of thumb from decades of teaching, rather than a research finding. https://strozziinstitute.com
Amanda Blake, Your Body Is Your Brain (2018). Neuroscience and somatics together, and Kate’s verdict is “a banger”.
Sigal G. Barsade (2002), “The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and Its Influence on Group Behavior”, Administrative Science Quarterly. The study with the drama student and the pot of money. https://doi.org/10.2307/3094912 
Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (2014). Where “above the line” and “below the line” come from. 
Harvard Business Review, “If You Aspire to Be a Great Leader, Be Present”, Rasmus Hougaard and Jacqueline Carter (2017). The article Maddie mentions on getting present before the next meeting. https://hbr.org/2017/12/if-you-aspire-to-be-a-great-leader-be-present 
Past episode: being above or below the line. [SERIES 1, EPISODE 2]
Further reading: the fire commander who pulled his crew out moments before the floor collapsed, without being able to say why, is usually traced to Gary Klein’s research on expert intuition, written up in Sources of Power (1998). 
Next episode6 Nov: Standing your ground vs preserving the relationship. Where do you usually sit, what would it be like to step towards the less familiar side, and can you do both at once?
Enjoying the show? Follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and a rating or review makes a real difference to a small podcast like ours.
About your hostsKate Nicholroy (Good Ideas Agency, https://www.goodideasagency.com) and Maddie Fox (MadFox Group, https://www.madfoxgroup.com) are coaches who work with senior leaders and their teams, and Late Night Leadership grew out of the conversations we keep having with them and with each other.
Produced by Tim Fox. Music by Richard Flindell.
Late Night Leadership was formerly A Curious Space.

This episode explores the tension between confidence and vulnerability in leadership, showing when each serves you and when it can harm outcomes.
Confidence vs Vulnerability: How Much Should a Leader Show?
You're asking investors to back a plan you know is partly a best guess, or you're a few weeks into a new role and everyone's waiting for you to set direction in a business you've barely got to know. Kate and Maddie look at the pull between projecting confidence and being open about what you don't know yet: what each one does for you, what happens when you lean too far either way, and how to work out which end you tend to default to.
In this episode
Why the most confident voice in the room tends to win the argument, even when it isn't the right one
Overestimation, overplacement and overprecision: three kinds of overconfidence, and the signs you might be leaning on one of them
A neurosurgeon who pairs complete certainty about what needs to happen with an open conversation about the options
Process, outcome and emotional vulnerability, and why it's usually the emotional kind that makes leaders want the ground to swallow them
When sharing how you feel helps your team, and when it hands them something heavy to carry
Try this: this week, pair confidence with vulnerability in the way you talk to your team. If you tend to lead with uncertainty, swap "I don't know if this will work" for something like "There are parts of this project I'm still working out, and I'm confident in our ability to figure them out together." If you tend to lead with certainty, try "I'm confident this is the right direction, and please tell me if there's anything else we should be thinking about." Notice which one felt harder to say, as that's probably a clue about which end of the spectrum you spend less time at.
Over to you Kate has said "overindex" so many times while planning this series that it's stopped sounding like a word. If you've got a better one, we'd love to hear it. Write to us at hello@latenightleadership.com.
Research and resources
Jessica A. Kennedy, Cameron Anderson and Don A. Moore (2013), "When overconfidence is revealed to others: Testing the status-enhancement theory of overconfidence", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. The research behind the idea that confidence, even when it isn't justified, raises your status with peers. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4d61t8rg
Don A. Moore and Paul J. Healy (2008), "The trouble with overconfidence", Psychological Review. Where the three "overs" come from. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18426301/
Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart (2021). Grounded confidence, humility, armouring, and "I'm here to get it right, not to be right", a line that came out of her Dare to Lead research. [ADD LINK]
Brené Brown, "The power of vulnerability", TED talk (2010). Vulnerability as uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability
Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling (2013; second edition with Peter Schein, 2021). Asking questions as an act of vulnerability that builds trust, and a very thin book, if you want something to read next. 
Kevin Novak on three types of vulnerability in leadership: process, outcome and emotional. https://www.2040digital.com/change-and-transformation-leadership/leading-with-measured-vulnerability/ 
Past episode: the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership (Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Klemp), and being "above" or "below the line". Season 1, Episode 2: how-culture-is-shaped-leaders-founders
Past episode: emotional contagion. Season 1, Episode 2: how-culture-is-shaped-leaders-founders
Further reading: the idea that showing vulnerability after you've shown competence makes you more likeable is often traced to Elliot Aronson's "pratfall effect" research from the 1960s, though later studies have found the effect depends a lot on context. 
Next episode 23rd October: Our embodied leadership special. The easiest way to find out what that is? Listen next time.
Enjoying the show? Follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and a rating or review makes a real difference to a small podcast like ours.
About your hosts Kate Nicholroy (Good Ideas Agency, https://www.goodideasagency.com) and Maddie Fox (MadFox Group, https://www.madfoxgroup.com) are coaches who work with senior leaders and their teams, and Late Night Leadership grew out of the conversations we kept having with them.
Produced by Tim Fox. Music by Richard Flindell.
Late Night Leadership was formerly A Curious Space.

Why some leadership problems aren't meant to be solved
We're back, with a new name and a new season! If you found us before as A Curious Space, it's still the two of us, with all the research, ideas and experience you know, but Late Night Leadership is focused on leadership itself: the joys, challenges and tensions that make it so interesting, talked through the way you would late at night with a trusted friend (the thoughtful kind of late night, not the 3am panic).
This launch episode introduces Season 1, The Leader in the Room, which is all about leading yourself. Some leadership problems have a clear answer, so you make the call and move on. Others are polarities, where two things are true at once and pull you in opposite directions, like short-term results and long-term strategy, control and autonomy, or caring for people and driving performance. Treat those as problems to fix and leaders can burn out and teams can stall, and there's some real relief in realising the tension was never meant to resolve.
In this episode- What a polarity is, and how it differs from a problem you solve once- What over-indexing looks like, with the classic numbers person and people person example- Why the discomfort of holding a tension makes us want to jump to a resolution, and why tolerating it for a little longer can lead to a better choice- Using what's happening in your body as data, and a return to the above and below the line model from Series 1- Standing your ground without losing yourself, and why "I didn't have a choice" is worth getting curious about- What's coming this season: confidence vs vulnerability, conviction vs curiosity, standing your ground vs preserving the relationship, a deep dive into embodied leadership, and a few guest conversations along the way
Try thisBefore the next episode, pick a challenge you're facing, ideally one that keeps coming back. Can you see it as a polarity? What's the opposite of the choice you keep making, and does looking at it that way give you a different perspective or a different way forward?
Over to youWhat's the tension you feel most as a leader? Write and tell us at hello@latenightleadership.com, because we'd love to weave listeners' tensions into episodes as the series goes on..
Over to youWhat's the tension you feel most as a leader? Write and tell us at hello@latenightleadership.com, because we'd love to weave listeners' tensions into episodes as the series goes on.
Research and resources- The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Warner Klemp, the source of the above and below the line model: https://conscious.is/15-commitments- From our back catalogue: Series 1, Episode 2, "How culture is shaped: leaders and founders", where we first talked about the line model: https://latenightleadership.com/episode/2-how-culture-is-shaped-leaders-founders- Further reading: Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems by Barry Johnson, the book that much of today's thinking about polarities grows from: https://www.polaritypartnerships.com/products
Next episodeFriday 9 October: confidence vs vulnerability, where each helps and where it gets in the way.
Enjoying the show? Follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, and if you enjoyed our earlier seasons, a rating or review makes a real difference to a small podcast like ours. The whole back catalogue is still in this feed and on our new website: https://latenightleadership.com
About your hostsKate Nicholroy (Good Ideas Agency, https://www.goodideasagency.com) and Maddie Fox (MadFox Group, https://www.madfoxgroup.com) are coaches who work with senior leaders and their teams, and Late Night Leadership grew out of the conversations we kept having with them.
Produced by Tim Fox. Music by Richard Flindell.
Late Night Leadership was formerly A Curious Space.

Late Night Leadership: Psychological Safety
Season finale
In this episode, Kate and Maddie explore psychological safety: what it actually means, why most people get it wrong, and the specific leadership behaviours that create it.
Drawing on Amy Edmondson's book The Fearless Organisation, they make the case that psychological safety is not about comfort, being nice, or avoiding conflict. It is the belief that your work environment is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. And it lives at team level, which means any leader can create it, regardless of what the wider organisation is doing.
What you'll hear in this episode:
Why psychological safety is not the same as comfort or harmony, and why falsely harmonious teams can have very low safety.
The neuroscience behind fear: what actually happens in your brain when you do not feel safe, and why even brilliant, experienced people will stay silent.
How Google's Project Aristotle found psychological safety to be the single biggest factor in high-performing teams, and why Edmondson describes it as "taking the brakes off."
The real cost of not having it, from the Volkswagen emissions scandal to the Pan Am disaster, and what those examples reveal about the weight of hierarchy.
Edmondson's three-part framework for building psychological safety as a leader:
Set the stage. Frame the work in a way that normalises failure, makes clear that input is needed, and gives people permission to speak honestly. Kate shares how reframing a feedback question from "what could Kate do better?" to "what advice do you have for Kate?" changed everything she got back.
Invite participation. Ask questions you genuinely do not know the answer to. Build structures that make contribution normal, from brain trusts (Pixar) to failure-sharing lunches.
Respond productively. Appreciate honesty even when the news is bad. Reward effort and learning, not just success. And yes, still hold people accountable when behaviour crosses a clear line: dealing with genuine violations actually increases safety for everyone else.
Practical takeaways for leaders:
Name your own part in what went wrong before asking others to do the same.
Try an aspirational question in your next team meeting. Rather than asking what has gone wrong, ask: "What is stopping this being as good as we want it to be?" or "What am I not seeing here?"
Use the "what's your 2%?" prompt to make shared accountability feel manageable. Everyone can admit 2%.
Experiment with the pre-mortem: assume the project has failed, then explore why. It surfaces risks early, and it is a gift for natural catastrophisers.
Ask directly: "What is one thing I could do to help the team feel safer taking risks?"
Referenced in this episode:
The Fearless Organisation by Amy Edmondson
Google's Project Aristotle
Pixar's Brain Trust
Patrick Lencioni on vulnerability-based trust
Nancy Kline's Time to Think
Carol Dweck's growth mindset research
Wells Fargo and the Volkswagen emissions scandal as case studies in the cost of low safety
A note from Kate and Maddie:
This is the last episode before a summer break. Season three launches in September and will focus entirely on leadership. If you have taken something from this series, we would love to hear from you: hello@acuriousspacepodcast.com
 
About the Hosts
Kate Nicholroy is a systemic team coach and facilitator working with senior leadership teams across the UK to help them think and work better together. She is founder of the Good Ideas Agency (www.goodideasagency.com) and holds executive coaching accreditations with the EMCC and ICF.
Maddie Fox is a senior HR leader and executive coach working with individuals, teams and organisations who want to develop authentic, conscious leadership skills, navigate challenging change and build foundations to become more resilient. She is the founder of MadFox Group (www.madfoxgroup.com).
Produced by Tim Fox. Music by Richard Flindell.
 

Culture Room 101: Four Things We're Banishing From Workplace Culture
Episode Summary
In this bridge episode between seasons, Kate and Maddie borrow the format from the BBC show Room 101 (itself borrowed from Orwell's 1984) to make the case for banishing pieces of organisational culture orthodoxy for good. One host argues for getting rid of something, the other plays devil's advocate, and together they decide whether it goes in the room.
Up for debate this episode: the feedback sandwich, describing your organisational culture as a family, using an annual away day as a substitute for the deeper work of culture change, and the phrase "let's take this offline." 
In This Episode
The feedback sandwich, and why cushioning developmental feedback between two positives tends to backfire in one of two directions.
Describing organisational culture as a family, and the blurred boundaries and unrealistic expectations this can create.
Away days used as a one-off fix, and the difference between an away day that supports ongoing culture work and one that replaces it.
The phrase "let's take this offline," and how it can shut down the productive conflict a team actually needs.
Key Concepts & Thinkers
The feedback sandwich: examined as conflict avoidance dressed up as kindness, and the cost of treating positive feedback as separate from developmental feedback.
Hellinger's systemic thinking: referenced on the flow of love in organisations, and why this doesn't require the family metaphor to exist.
Away days as a sticking plaster: distinguishing genuine, sustained culture work from a single annual event expected to do all the work.
Nancy Kline's Thinking Environment: referenced on writing clear questions for meeting agendas and checking back against what a meeting was actually there to do.
Lencioni's Five Dysfunctions of a Team: referenced on the avoidance of productive conflict, and how "let's take this offline" can be a symptom of this.
Reflection Questions
When you give feedback, are you managing the other person's experience, or your own discomfort with the conversation?
Does your organisation describe itself as a family? What expectations does that create, and what happens when reality doesn't match them?
Think about your last away day. Was it part of an ongoing plan, or a stand-alone event hoping to fix something in a day?
How often does "let's take this offline" come up in your meetings, and what is it usually protecting people from?
About the Hosts
Kate Nicholroy is a systemic team coach and facilitator working with senior leadership teams across the UK to help them think and work better together. She is founder of the Good Ideas Agency (www.goodideasagency.com) and holds executive coaching accreditations with the EMCC and ICF.
Maddie Fox is a senior HR leader and executive coach working with individuals, teams and organisations who want to develop authentic, conscious leadership skills, navigate challenging change and build foundations to become more resilient. She is the founder of MadFox Group (www.madfoxgroup.com).
Get in Touch
Got something you think belongs in Room 101? Or want to defend something we've banished? Email us at hello@latenightleadership.com or visit www.latenightleadership.com to join the conversation.
 
Produced by Tim Fox. Music by Richard Flindell.

In this episode of Late Night Leadership, Kate and Maddy open up the Culture Clinic for the first time, responding to a letter from a listener we are calling Rowan. Rowan runs a business where two years of deliberate culture-building is being undermined by one person: a commercial director who brings in more revenue than anyone else and makes working life harder for almost everyone around them.
 
The question Rowan is sitting with is one that will be familiar to many leaders: can I afford to lose this person? Kate and Maddy turn that question around. Have you properly costed what it is to keep them?
 
What we cover in this episode
The tension between visible and invisible costs in organisations, and why the financial impact of difficult behaviour rarely makes it onto a balance sheet.
 
Research by Pearson and Porath (2005) on workplace incivility, including findings that 50% of people lose significant work time managing around a difficult colleague, 70% vent outside the organisation, and one in eight eventually leave.
 
Why tolerating behaviour sends a louder signal than any values statement.
 
How to approach a genuinely different kind of conversation with a high performer whose behaviour is causing damage, one that is curious about what is driving it rather than just addressing the symptom.
 
The role of reward structures and performance expectations in either reinforcing or shifting the problem.
 
What support for this kind of conversation can look like, including for the leader having it.
 
Research referenced
Pearson, C. and Porath, C. (2005). On the nature, consequences and remedies of workplace incivility: No time for "nice"? Think again. Academy of Management Perspectives, 19(1), 7-18.
 
About the hosts
Kate Nicholroy is a systemic team coach and facilitator working with senior leadership teams across the UK to help them think and work better together. She is founder of the Good Ideas Agency (www.goodideasagency.com) and holds executive coaching accreditations with the EMCC and ICF.
Maddie Fox is a senior HR leader and executive coach working with individuals, teams and organisations, who want to develop authentic, conscious leadership skills, navigate challenging change and build foundations to become more resilient. She is the founder of MadFox Group (www.madfoxgroup.com).
 
Listen and connect
Find all episodes of A Curious Space at www.latenightleadership.com.
 
Get in touch with a cultural conundrum, a question, or to find out how Kate and Maddy can support your organisation: hello@latenightleadership.com
 
Credits
Late Night Leadership is produced by Tim Fox with music by Richard Flindell.