Episode 245

Released: October 29, 2026

Dr Kenneth Ro MD has spent 35 years in emergency medicine. He kept seeing the same thing. Men who hadn't seen a doctor in a decade, arriving with a heart attack or stroke that changed everything.

So Ken changed his approach. He now works upstream, helping high-performing men and women deal with health risks long before they reach A&E.

Around 80% of the people I work with are men. Much of what Ken shared felt very familiar.

• Why decline creeps up so slowly we barely notice

• The one question to ask your doctor next time

• How success quietly builds an echo chamber around leaders

• Why midlife is an identity shift, not a crisis

• The new scorecard for the second half of life

• A Maasai warrior's surprising definition of a man

The more senior you become, the less honest feedback you get. Nobody tells the boss. And the boss rarely asks. Meanwhile, the body keeps score. Ken explains how to read the signs before it sends the bill.

Pause before you react. Start each day intending to respond rather than knee-jerk. Reflect on it that evening. Do it again tomorrow. Small days add up.

And break the silence.

Ken believes the biggest risk to men's health isn't cholesterol or blood pressure. It's silence, and the loneliness that follows.

If you love a man, help him start that conversation.

Ken is a double board-certified physician, creator of the RECLAIM Method and author of Prime: How to Win the Second Half of Life. He now practises precision medicine with Wild Health and also runs Back in the Game Men, his programme for men's midlife health. He speaks to organisations on performance, sleep and burnout resilience.

• Website: kennethromd.com

• Free: Read Chapter 1 of Prime

• Free: Take the Midlife Performance Gap Assessment

• For HR and L&D teams: Speaking and corporate training

• LinkedIn | Instagram

Episode 244

Released October 15, 2026

This week I talk to Kate Jones, a Senior Leadership Adviser & Executive Coach.

Kate runs Neon, a coaching and consulting company, which specialises in leadership development for mission-driven organisations, through leadership strategy, team development and one-to-one coaching. At the heart of it all is Kate's signature Deeply Human® leadership model.

We talk at length about why so much of working life feels grey and exhausting, and what leaders can do about it.

Drawing on her years as a probation officer and management consultant, Kate shares an insight into her approach to leadership, why connection matters more than ever as AI reshapes work, and simple ways to build empathy when it doesn't come naturally.

The hamster wheel. What happens when organisations drain the colour out of their people.

Small decisions, big consequences. We look at the Post Office and Harrods scandals in the UK and how they built up, one "quiet decision" at a time.

Leading through the cuts. Kate is coaching senior leaders in tech who are having to manage repeated rounds of job losses. She discusses how leaders can handle feelings of guilt.

Staying human as AI moves in. Kate brings Pope Leo XIV's recent book Magnifica Humanitas into the conversation, kicking off a discussion on the significance of taking care of what is quintessentially human.

When empathy feels out of reach. I share the story of a CEO who wanted to support a colleague but froze. Kate offers two practical ways that might help anyone going through the same kind of thing, including a coaching exercise that terrified her, and then changed her.

Finally, Kate talks about her upcoming book, scheduled for publication next year. Provisionally titled Deeply Human: Why Work Is Broken and How Leaders Can Fix It, the book combines a rallying cry for change based on her strategic leadership model and a set of reflective questions and practices.

• Website: deeplyneon.com

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/katerjones

• Book a free 30-minute discovery call: calendly.com/kate-069/30min-discovery

• Discover your leadership archetype: neon4.scoreapp.com

• Linktree for book pre-order news and plenty more.

Episode 243

Released October 1, 2026

Kyle Skalisky, who today is an aerospace executive, and leadership strategist, spent 23 years in the US Air Force, much of it flying the F-15. He then took those lessons into industry.

As Kyle explains on the show, his core point is simple: fighter pilot training isn't about obedience. It's about learning to think, solve problems and keep learning.

When he moved into business, he was surprised how rarely those habits existed.

Kyle separates leading from managing. Management is about processes and systems. Leadership is about people. In a flight, anyone might need to lead at any moment, and everyone must be ready to follow. You simply need to know when it's your turn.

When building a team, Kyle looks for character, competence and commitment. The first two you recruit for. The third is the leader's job to create.

A 90-minute training sortie could be followed by a three or four hour debrief, with everyone speaking as an equal. In industry, Kyle noticed the same "lessons learned" coming up meeting after meeting. Spotting a problem isn't the same as learning from it. The action is what counts.

With his first team of fifty, Kyle sat down with every person and asked how their work contributed to the mission. Many couldn't say. So he gave the team its own clear mission and shared values of trust, respect and accountability. Trust meant never letting a wingman down, and never letting a wingman fail.

By year eight, the team no longer needed him. For Kyle, that is the real legacy of a leader.

Listen before you change anything. Give people a mission they understand. Build a team where nobody is allowed to fail. And debrief honestly, then act on what you learn. Leadership isn't about being the best in the room. It's about creating the conditions for others to succeed.

Learn more about Kyle's best-selling book, A Sky Less Traveled on his website.