The Not So Breakfast Show

Say Hello
Episode 276
What do you do when someone is smashing every target… while making everyone around them quietly consider a career change?
This week, Ish and Sacha get into the awkward world of difficult high performers: the rock stars, sales guns and thoroughbreds who deliver brilliant results but don't always play nicely with others. When is "difficult" actually a valuable challenge? When is it genuinely destructive?
And at what point do you stop worrying about what if they leave? And start asking, what if they stay? 
They explore the important difference between someone who ruffles feathers because they're pushing standards and challenging mediocrity, and someone whose success comes with a trail of damage behind them. Because letting your thoroughbreds run is one thing. Letting them kick everyone else in the head on the way past is another.
There's also a brilliant confession from Sacha about being given responsibility for providing feedback at 18 or 19, despite having absolutely no idea how to give feedback,  resulting in roughly "one thing you did well and 95 things you were a bit shit at." Strangely, people weren't grateful.
Along the way, they get into courageous conversations, team standards, whether team charters actually change anything. 
Plus, the most important preparation for Ish and Sacha's upcoming overseas speaking gig: apparently, sorting out what they're wearing.
Key Learnings
1. Difficult isn't necessarily destructive
Look at the impact of the behaviour: are they raising the team's game, or raising themselves by pushing everyone else down?  Pasted text
2. Ask "What if they stay?"
Leaders can become so worried about losing a star performer that they'll tolerate behaviour they'd never accept from anyone else.
3. Results don't cancel out behaviour
If performance reviews only reward the numbers, you're effectively telling people that how they achieve those numbers doesn't matter. 
4. Sometimes people genuinely don't know they're difficult
Before deciding someone is simply an arsehole, consider whether anyone has actually told them how their behaviour lands.
5. Standards only matter when you use them
Team charters, values and behavioural agreements can be useful, but the document itself changes nothing. They become real the first time someone crosses the line, and another team member says, "We're not going to do that around here." That's when words on the wall become the way a team actually works.

Say Hello
Episode 275
Ish and Sacha dig into the slightly uncomfortable reality of AI and productivity: technology keeps promising to save us time, but humans are remarkably talented at immediately filling that time with more stuff.
From AI-generated reports nobody really needs, to 15-page emails nobody wants to read, they explore the difference between using AI to make work better and simply using it to create more work.
Sacha introduces a useful question, “to what end?” as a way of challenging the endless drive toward greater output. If an AI tool saves you an hour, does that hour automatically need to become another hour of productivity? Or could it become thinking time, recovery, learning, creativity or simply space to do the important stuff better?
There’s also a WHOOP watch that mistakes public speaking for tennis, a Dyson battery rescued by ChatGPT, suitcase-packing marital commentary, billionaire ambition, the strange guilt of not looking busy between nine and five, and a warning for anyone currently forwarding enormous AI-generated emails to their colleagues.
The big message: AI should help us work differently, not just help us cram more work into the same day.
Key Learnings
1. Don’t automatically fill the time AI gives back
2. Ask “to what end?”
Being able to produce more reports, more analysis or more output doesn’t automatically mean you should. 
3. More data isn’t the same as better decisions
AI can make information easier to produce. Human judgement is still required to decide whether that information matters.
4. Use AI where it genuinely removes friction
Sometimes the best use of AI isn’t an enormous strategic project. It’s taking a photo of the bottom of your dying Dyson battery and asking where you can buy a replacement.
5. Leaders need to teach what “good AI use” looks like
Telling people to use AI and then criticising them whenever they use it badly isn’t particularly helpful. 
And crucially: if AI makes someone more efficient, don’t automatically reward them with another mountain of work.

Say Hello
Episode 274
What do Ted Lasso, Korean skincare, a runaway car and being unexpectedly told you’re “foxy” have in common? More than you’d think, apparently.
After Ish narrowly avoids watching his car disappear backwards down his death-trap driveway, he and Sacha get into why Ted Lasso has become such a compelling picture of leadership. Not because Ted has everything sorted, but because he manages to combine optimism, vulnerability and genuine care with standards, honesty and a willingness to have the hard conversations.
Turns out kindness works considerably better when it has a backbone.
This episode is a love letter to Ted Lasso, but less about football and more about the kind of leadership the character represents.
Ish and Sacha unpack why Ted’s combination of kindness, optimism, vulnerability and belief in people feels so refreshing. He sees the person before the performance, takes time to understand what makes people tick and, rather than writing people off when they behave badly, keeps inviting them back towards the best version of themselves.
They also explore why compassionate leadership can look different depending on who is doing it, how Ted challenges some traditional ideas of masculinity, and why being vulnerable doesn’t mean turning your team into your therapists.
Along the way, there’s an All Blacks example of beautifully simple inclusive leadership, Sacha discovers perhaps the greatest unsolicited compliment ever received by text, and Ish shares what happens when someone keeps going after repeated career knockbacks rather than throwing their toys out of the pram.
Key Learnings

1. See the person before the performance
2. Call people in, not just out
3. Kindness needs a backbone
4. Optimism is something you can practise
5. You don't have to be a finished product to lead well

Say Hello
Episode 273
Do you know your why? Your purpose? The deep, meaningful reason you leap out of bed every morning ready to change the world?
No? Excellent. You may be absolutely fine.
This week, Sacha takes aim at Simon Sinek and the whole “find your why” idea or at least the pressure that comes with it. Do we all really have one big purpose we’re supposed to uncover, or is that just another thing to feel behind on? 
Ish tries to work out whether purpose is something we discover, something we choose, or just a nice story we tell ourselves after accidentally ending up in the same industry for 30 years. Somehow this leads to Dolly Parton, coal, fake boobs, bad coffee and Ish going full Liam Neeson on a couple talking through a movie.
Ish and Sacha unpack why purpose can be useful, where it starts to get a bit wobbly, and why sometimes it’s perfectly okay to just be good at what you do, enjoy parts of it, and build meaning as you go. 
Key Learnings
1. You don’t have to “find” your purpose
Purpose doesn’t necessarily arrive as one giant revelation about what you were put on Earth to do. It may be something you gradually build by noticing what you're good at, what gives you energy, where you feel most yourself and how those things can be useful to other people.
2. Purpose and talent aren’t the same thing
You can be extremely good at something without it being your life's calling. Ish reflects on the idea that the abilities that have helped him succeed in the fitness industry could probably have been applied in plenty of other industries too.
3. A good purpose doesn’t rescue a bad product
You can care deeply about making the world's most meaningful cup of coffee, but if the coffee tastes terrible, people probably aren't coming back.
Purpose can strengthen a good organisation, but it doesn't replace quality, competence or commercial reality. Sometimes making a genuinely useful product, treating people well and running a sustainable business is meaningful enough.
4. Your company’s purpose doesn’t automatically have to become yours
Working somewhere whose values you believe in can absolutely make work more satisfying. But that doesn't mean employees need to absorb the company's mission as their personal reason for existing.
5. Purpose can change
Family, work, experiences and major life events can all change what feels meaningful to us. That doesn't mean your old purpose was wrong or your new one is somehow less authentic.

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Say Hello
Episode 272
What happens when being “the smart one” becomes part of your identity? Apparently, you get very good at constructing brilliant arguments for ideas that may still be completely terrible.
This week, Ish and Sacha get into the uncomfortable gap between intelligence and good judgement. There’s ego, groupthink, sunk costs, Harvard-sized imposter syndrome, a $200 million floating movie set, and the important reminder that sometimes the cleverest thing you can say in a meeting is: “Hang on… are we sure?”
They explore what happens when intelligence gets tangled up with ego and identity, and winning the argument becomes more important than making the right call. Sacha admits to occasionally wanting to make the other person’s argument for them properly before rebutting it, which is both impressively efficient and perhaps not the strongest foundation for collaborative decision-making.
The conversation moves through book smarts versus broader intelligence, the danger of mistaking confidence and eloquence for correctness, and why genuinely smart people tend to know the limits of what they know.
They also look at groupthink: what happens when a room full of capable people all agree, nobody challenges the direction, and everyone confidently marches towards the same cliff.
Then they ask one very useful question for projects, strategies and decisions that have taken on a life of their own:
If we hadn’t already started this, would we choose to start it today?
Key Learnings
1. Don’t confuse winning the argument with making the right decision
Being articulate, persuasive or quick-thinking can help you defend almost any position. That doesn’t make the position correct.
2. The smartest people stay open to being wrong
Real intelligence includes knowing where your knowledge ends.
3. A room full of smart people can still walk off a cliff
Agreement isn’t proof that a decision is good.
4. Don’t let someone else’s intelligence silence your own contribution
Sacha’s Harvard experience is a great reminder that being surrounded by impressive people can make us start discounting what we bring.
5. Previous investment is not a reason to keep making the same decision
The further we get into a project, the easier it becomes to build a convincing story about why we simply have to keep going.

The 30-Minute Presenter Program
Learn how to map out your content, structure your thoughts, and craft messages that truly matter.
Check out our 30-Minute Presenter Program today.
Click here to learn more