Mis-hiring is the silent landmine beneath your high-performing team. It’s not just a bad hire. It’s a culture destabiliser. A trust eroder. A progress killer. It may feel safe to chalk it up as “just one wrong person,” but recent data suggests the financial and relational toll is far heavier. A mis-hire can cost up to 30 % of the employee’s first-year earnings, including lost productivity, recruitment, onboarding, and disruption. So when an executive does not fit and the crac

The champagne glasses were still clinking when the cracks began to show. A star executive had been hired at lightning speed, hailed as the catalyst for change. Within half a year, departments were working at cross purposes, key metrics were falling like dominoes, and the exit package was costing more than the company’s last major project. So the real question for leaders is this: does moving fast on hiring truly put you ahead, or does it quietly set you back months and mil

The executive mirage is what happens when we confuse presence with potential. It’s the polished speech, the poised manner, the confident stride into the boardroom that convinces us we’re looking at a high-impact leader. Traditionally, these signals have been held up as markers of leadership. Commanding tone. Sharp delivery. Decisiveness in meetings. These behaviours feel reassuring, especially under pressure.

Something that I firmly believe is an investment for any company's future is leadership development. As you will go on to read, I'm clearly not alone in that opinion. It’s common sense that training people to be better, more diligent, more focused and finding gaps in their skills is always a positive thing. It's also one of the first things to go when budget constraints are required. So, the big question: is leadership development really worth the money?

We all know the phrase “culture fit”... it’s been baked into hiring decisions for decades. But here’s an uncomfortable truth, when overused or misunderstood, cultural fit can become a Trojan horse for unconscious bias. And the result? Leadership teams filled with people who look, think, and lead a lot like… well, you. That’s not cultural alignment. That’s cultural stagnation.

We spend so much time evaluating candidates on what's visible, but it's what lies beneath that truly determines their ultimate success.

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