We often think great leadership is about having all the answers and staying composed under pressure. But what if the real key to leading a high-performing team is being open about your mistakes?

In this episode, Kim Wylie reflects on two decades of leadership experience at Google, Farfetch, and scale-ups—sharing what actually builds trust and performance when you’re stepping into a new team.

We talk about:

• Why trying to be the perfect manager backfires

• How Kim built psychological safety in a team that didn’t trust her at first

• How to handle resistance to new ways of working in distributed teams

• The team rituals she uses to foster connection, even across regions

• What to do when your team gives you negative feedback

• The neuroscience of why solving everyone’s problems is not good leadership

• And how even senior leaders still struggle with imposter syndrome

This is a masterclass in human-centred leadership—with practical tools, real stories, and the kind of honest reflection most leaders wish they heard more often.

🧠 Some Takeaways

“If you’re a manager and you’re always solving everyone’s problems, you’re robbing them of that dopamine hit.”

“One of the biggest lessons I learned is that being vulnerable builds trust—and trust drives performance.”

“People need to see that how you show up on day one is how you’re going to keep showing up.”

🔗 Links & Resources

Follow Kim on LinkedIn

Watch the full video interview on YouTube

Subscribe to the podcast for more real stories and practical leadership insights.

Connect to me and ask me about coaching!

From Google to high-growth scaleups to the boardroom, Maya Moufarek has spent 20+ years helping founders scale their businesses. As the founding CMO of Pharmacy2U, she helped grow the UK’s largest online pharmacy to a scale equivalent to opening a new pharmacy every 2.5 days. Today, she’s a fractional CMO, board member, and angel investor, helping startups build scalable, profitable growth engines.

In this episode, Maya shares:

• 🚀 Scaling from startup to industry leader: How Pharmacy2U grew and the challenges they faced

• 🤝 Cross-functional leadership: Why aligning senior teams (“first teams”) is critical in scaleups

• 🔥 Lessons from Google & AMEX: What big tech taught her about stakeholder management

• ⏳ Surviving near-failure: What she did when the company was running out of cash

• 🏦 Navigating board & investor relations: How to handle tough conversations at the top

• 🌍 Building a portfolio career: How Maya balances operator, investor, and board roles

Where to Find Maya:

🌍 Website: MarketingCube.co

🔗 LinkedIn: Maya Moufarek

Being a scaleup leader can feel like herding cats.
- You’re growing, that’s great.
- But your growth brings problems.
- You have more people but they get less done.
- Autonomy used to work, now there is misalignment.
- People get in each other’s way and slow things down.
Is the solution less autonomy? Or is that too restrictive?
Cliff Hazell has the answer.

Cliff worked with Spotify to grow from 700 to 5000 people. So he knows a thing or two about scaleups.

✅ Have better meetings
✅ Focus on a #1 priority
✅ Introduce Flight Levels.
Flight Levels operationalise strategy - they get people out of each other’s way to get more done.
And if this is a new concept for you, then you’ll want to watch this episode where Cliff and I go deep into this whole topic.
👉 How to find the sweet spot between autonomy and alignment.
👉 Why an outsider is better at unblocking bottlenecks than you.
👉 Why most meetings are unfortunately cr*p.
👉 How Flight Levels solve all this?And if you'd like to connect with Cliff, you can find him on LinkedIn or at cliffhazell.com

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